


After the End

by kihadu



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Aromantic, Aromantic Zevran Arainai, Asexual Character, Asexual Fenris, Asexual Zevran Arainai, Brief mentions of suicidal desires, Genderqueer Character, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-26
Updated: 2014-11-29
Packaged: 2018-02-10 12:28:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2025156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kihadu/pseuds/kihadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Hero died, and Zevran has spent the years unable to parse this fact. He comes to Kirkwall, and suddenly, inexplicably, he cannot stop remembering her.</p><p>In which Zevran is ace and aro and broken-hearted, and Fenris is ace and tentative about forming emotional attachments but kind of infatuated with Hawke, who doesn't talk much to anyone at all, really.</p><p>This is more a story about Zevran than anything else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you need help believing Zevran as ace [here's a fic I've written](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1748873), though it is not necessary backstory for this story, or even intended as a prequel to this. (I also [wrote one with Fenris as ace](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1799776), but that fic is complete on its own.)
> 
> Spivak pronouns are my favourite: ey/em/eir.

Zevran arrives in Kirkwall on a horse, which is weird and horrific because he hates horses. It’s the elf in him, probably. He doesn’t pretend he’s not an elf - he pulls his hair back over his ears and is always sure to tread lightly, throwing humans weird glinting grins and forever showing off his uncanny hearing, but he’s more shem than elf and he knows it. So Zevran arrives in Kirkwall riding a horse that he discards as soon as he’s able, and he finds the men who want to kill him, and he finds Hawke.

A mage so obvious oven this city should be dead ten times over but instead she’s a calm force of death, scarcely speaking and even then her words are clipped short, no breath wasted. Behind her comes a person so strange Zevran almost dismisses em as an imagined shadow.

Eir white hair is long and tied with the same red that Hawke wears as a scarf, and ey sneers at Zevran’s habitual flirtation. Fenris, eir name is, and Zevran is enchanted in a way he cannot describe.

 

He decides he'll stick around in Kirkwall. Isabela is there, and it has been too long since he has seen her.  There is also Anders, who looks nothing like how he thought and doesn't stir as much pain as he’d expected. He knew of Anders before now, but only as a name scrawled in Alistair’s weirdly neat handwriting. Alistair had sent him letters for months after the Blight, letters that Zevran could scarcely bring himself to read let alone respond to.

Alistair was… perhaps still is a friend. A good friend, perhaps the only person Zevran can call a friend, now that Leliana is gone to the winds and the Warden…

Well.

Everyone knows what happened to the Hero of Ferelden.

“May I walk with you to the city?” he asks Hawke. Hawke glances at the sky as though that will give an answer before twitching her head in a sideways sort of nod, and then she turns to the Dalish elf, whose arm is red with blood. Anders is grimacing at them both, and the other elf, Fenris, ey is saying nothing at all. Then, ey glares at the sky, at the same cluster of dull clouds that Hawke looked at, and pushes eir hair out of eir eyes.

There are small dots of the same white tattooing on his forehead, clustered in a triangle, and Zevran unconsciously wets his lips and quickly glances away, embarrassed and not wanting to be.

“It’s going to rain,” Fenris says, loudly. Ey starts off down the path, but it takes a few beats for the mages to notice and follow. Hawke catches up to Fenris, and they walk close together.

Zevran falls in beside Anders. “I have heard tell of you,” he begins. Anders flashes him a suspicious look, one tinged in magical blue, and Zevran, who faced dragons beside the Warden, does not flinch. “From Alistair.”

The entire party stops as one. Hawke turns. “You are not taking him.” It is a statement of fact.

“I would not dare,” says Zevran. He gives a sly smile that no one here seems to pay any attention to, so he winks at Anders and gets nothing more than a confused sort of irritation in response. “I have heard tales, is all. I had merely wanted to know if they were true.”

“What has Alistair told you?” Anders snaps. He is suspicious, and dangerous, and so unlike what a human should be that Zevran cannot find his tongue for a moment.

“Primarily that you are an annoying flirt. Much like myself,” he smirks, to hide his previous hesitation. He can still play this game. He plays it all the time; it’s all he knows, even if he does not follow through any longer.

“Times change,” says Anders. He pushes forward, past Merrill and on down the path. Zevran almost expects some kind of apology from Anders’ friends, a quirk of the lips and a “sorry, I’m sure he didn’t mean to be rude”, but nothing comes. Hawke glares at him, calls her dog to her heel, and goes to follow. Merrill does give Zevran an unreadable look, sort of sorrow but mournful and gentle. He does not know what it means, and he is an expert at expression.

He does not like Kirkwall, he thinks.

Fenris has already started off, leaving him to plod awkwardly behind. He takes a few fast steps and falls in alongside.

“Rain, hm?” he asks. A poor question. The weather, he scoffs at himself. Fenris glances at the sky.

“Yes,” ey says. “Soon. But have no fear. We shall return to the city before then.” Ey looks ahead to Hawke, who is listening to Merrill chatter, the elf’s words snatched into the wind. Anders is irritated, but the dog is at his side. “We are a tight-knit group,” Fenris says. It’s defensive, not an apology.

“I do not wish to step into anything,” says Zevran. “I am grateful for your assistance. It was not necessary. I can remain here, and walk to the city on my own, if that is easier.”

“It will rain,” says Fenris.

“I do not mind getting a little wet,” Zevran gives em a look that would have weaker people blushing in response, but Fenris doesn’t seem to fathom what he means and only gives him a bland expression of curiosity in response. Zevran relaxes his face into a soft smile. “I only wish to see Isabela. I have not seen her in some time, and it is so nice to be reacquainted with old… friends.” The pause is habitual. His entire being is habitual. Surana was in the process of breaking him into someone he liked better, but when that was all over he returned to the Crows.

“Isabela has many… friends,” says Fenris, and the pause is almost mocking.

“You and she…?”

Fenris laughs so suddenly and loudly that the dog whirls, ears pricked, and both Hawke and Merrill stare in shock at them. “You are a curious man,” Fenris manages. The laugh was strange, too high-pitched for a man but eir voice is a low growl. Eir hair is long but shoulders wide.

Zevran is interested but not enough that he needs to ask. He wants only to look, and hopes he will be allowed. For now he keeps his gaze ahead, watching Hawke. She reminds him of some feeling, something he cannot pinpoint and doesn’t want to search too deep to place. Anders has slowed down enough to join the other mages, and Fenris is watching them all fondly. Protectively.

Zevran feels like an outsider about to step into battle naked and blind and armed with nothing at all.

He swallows, and keeps close to Fenris’ side. Fenris does not step away, which gives Zevran another feeling entirely.

 

Isabela gives him one of those hugs. The, bosom right against his throat and his face pressed against the cold metal of her necklace, her chin on his head sort of hug.

He’s shorter than her. She loves it. He lets her, because he’s an assassin for the Antivan Crows and few people let even their clothes brush against his skin. He misses the contact, misses warm skin against his. He closes his eyes for just a moment, scarcely safe with Fenris behind him and the mages beside.

But he closes them for a moment, because this is Isabela, and even if he doesn’t know this strange group of people they did spend the afternoon killing the people trying to kill him.

“How’ve you been?” she asks, a warm smile lighting her face. It’s not a question he wants to answer and she quickly follows it with, “Killed anyone fun lately?”

“There was a prince.”

“A prince?” Her eyes light up. She loves a story. “This will take more alcohol than I have, I think. Varric, you should hear this. Zevran is of the Antivan Crows,” she calls over her shoulder. She is still holding onto him, and at the table beyond them Zevran can see a dwarf sitting beside a blue-eyed man in Chantry clothes.

He’s really not surprised to know that they’re part of Hawke’s group.

 

Hawke does not speak. That is established pretty early on. It’s not a mutism thing so much as she just doesn’t seem to enjoy the process of forming words with her mouth. She gestures, taps on the table, tilts her head. The others read her motions and refill her drink, or respond to a question not voiced, or repeat themselves to be better heard over the mess of conversation at the table.

She sits silent with an ugly scar over her nose and red scarf like blood draped over her shoulders, one hand on her dog’s head and her staff leaning against the table where it brushes her sleeve every so often.

Her mere presence more than bothers Zevran. It unsettles him, and in an attempt to ignore it he lets Varric quiz him about the Crows and leers at Isabela and looks at Fenris.

He spends so much time looking that he knows Fenris knows, and he hates his lack of subtlety but he cannot stop. 


	2. Chapter 2

The night is still young when Zevran finds himself schooling a yawn from his face, and Fenris tilts eir head at him knowingly. Zevran smirks, but does not yawn. It does not do to allow such tells, and it is better to remain in practice even when safe.

Spending time travelling has done its toll: up with the sun and down with the same, and now that it is a scant hour after dark he longs for bed. It is another hour before anyone at the table appears to feel the same, bar the dog who fell asleep with the first round of drinks.

Hawke stands. She does it abruptly, and once up she waits while her dog lumbers to her feet. Zevran thinks this is all she is waiting for, but she looks at Fenris, who finishes eir cup with a quick swallow and rises to join her.

No one else at the table has moved; Anders has gone home long before and Varric and Isabela have already revealed that they have rooms here. Sebastian is talking to Merrill, and it takes Fenris slamming eir cup down on the table for him to jolt.

“Time already?” Sebastian asks. “Very well. I will see you… not tomorrow,” he smiles at Merrill, who smiles back.

“Choir boy,” says Varric, formally.

“Story-teller,” Sebastian returns, just as solemn. “Sleep well, Isabela.”

“With a new elf?” asks Isabela, her hand touching Zevran’s forearm. He does not flinch away, because it does not do to flinch, and it does not do to become used to reacting how he desires to. He smirks instead. Fenris looks at him, and Zevran looks back, swallows, and is grateful that Hawke suddenly turns and marches down the stairs.

Immediately they are gone Zevran moves his arm, a casual motion as though he wants only to put both hands around his mug.

It is later, but not much later, as Varric seemed to catch wind of Zevran’s weariness, that Zevran is standing in Isabela’s room.

“I’ll take left, you take right,” says Isabela. She is taking off blankets, and when she sees Zevran staring she says, “I’ve shared a bed with you. I know what a furnace you can be.”

“I don’t,” he can feel her fingers on his arm. “We are not…”

Isabela pauses. She looks at him, eyes filled up with sorrow. “Oh, Zevran,” she says. She puts the blankets down so she can touch his jaw. “That you, of all people, found love.”

His throat clenches up and Zevran cannot meet her eyes. He wrenches his chin from her touch and focuses on undoing his belt.

“Does it never bother you,” he asks, voice sounding distant even to him. “Using sex as a weapon?”

She laughs. “Why? I enjoy it, often they enjoy it.” She frowns, and repeats herself more seriously. “Why?”

“I cannot stomach it any longer. Worse,” he gives a small, self-depreciating smile, “I do not want it.”

Isabela is his friend, a friend of ages past, a friend who understands him. They were always kindred spirits, blades bloodied and grinning, enjoying every aspect of life that they could gather up to devour. She has always accepted him, entire. He focuses his attention on undoing the tricky buckles of his belt, fingers stuttering against the leather. He is terrified. He cannot meet her eye.

“Is this..?”

“Because of her?” he snaps, too harsh, and he looks up in time to see her flinch schooled away into calm. He sits down on the bed and begins wrestling with a boot. “Why should it be? Why can I not have something for myself, something that no one gave me? This is just me, nothing taught, nothing forced. I simply,” his shoulders fall, and he does not want to cry. Crying is ridiculous, useless.

Isabela comes to his side away, puts a gentle hand on his back, between his shoulder blades.

He shudders, just once, and then swallows it all away. He puts himself back together, leaning slightly on the comfort of her hand. “In any case, I get a better night’s sleep this way,” he quips.

She studies his face a moment before smiling in return. “You take right, I take left?” she repeats. He puts a hand on her thigh to stop her moving away.

“Thank you,” he whispers.

“Nothing to thank,” she returns, momentarily stiff and awkward. She gets up to finish with the blankets, and he takes off his boots and lines them up neatly beside the bed. Minutes later they are teasing each other about their battle scars and the struggle Isabela has to go through to get her boots off. They fall into bed, tired and smiling, and before rolling over to sleep Zevran touches her hand, just once, in thanks.


	3. Chapter 3

He wakes to find the bed empty and the room warm. There is a change of clothes sitting neatly folded and nearly clean, and a basin with water on the fire. He washes his face and his shoulders and his chest, fingers tracing the lines of tattoos without thought. He braids his hair without tying it off, trusting the water to hold it in shape until he can be bothered to find the piece of string that was in it the night before.

Isabela is at a table with Varric and an elf he does not recognise. The boy is eating fast and dressed poorly, and he flinches when Zevran sits down at the table with them. Zevran doesn’t say a word, just pours himself a drink and looks around. The place is busy, despite the hour.

“It’s a poor city,” says Varric. The door opens, bringing with it a gust of wind that lashes Fenris’ thick hair around eir shoulder, red ribbon threatening to come lose. It’s a ponytail today, not a braid. Zevran wants to run his fingers through it. Probably Fenris would kill him even for the thought, so he focuses on the clothes that Isabela is wearing, shoulders covered and necklace half hidden beneath the collar of her shirt.

“Ho, Broody. What brings you slumming today?” Fenris sits with a heavy clump.

“Work,” ey says. Ey makes a gesture at the man behind the bar, and soon ey’s got a bowl of food. Zevran asks for the same, which he watches get unceremoniously dumped into a bowl and brought over. Fenris glances at Zevran, at the elvish boy who is mopping up his plate with a piece of bread, and dismisses them both. Varric is looking at em expectantly, having not accepted 'work' as a reason.

“Anders is visiting Hawke,” ey gives in.

“Ah-hah,” smiles Varric. To Zevran, as though it is a secret, he says, “Broody here doesn’t like Anders.”

“That’s not true,” Isabela protests. “Ey likes Anders. It’s mages ey doesn’t like.”

So it is ‘ey’. Zevran has only heard the pronouns occasionally, but he likes them better than using no pronouns at all.

“I’m right here,” says Fenris. “And I do not like Anders.”

“Ey likes Anders,” Isabela says to Zevran in a stage whisper. “It’s taken six years-” A piece of crust hits her cheek and she stops, startled.

“Shut up,” says Fenris, a grin on eir lips. Zevran looks at Varric, who is fishing around in a bag for a few coins, which he gives to the elvish boy before allowing him to dart away out into the weather. Fenris glances at Zevran. “I was enslaved by mages," ey explains, an easy comment, as though it weighs less on eir tongue than eir request for breakfast.

“Hence you dislike them,” says Zevran. “I understand. I was enslaved by assassins, and don’t really like any, either.”

“Except for me,” says Isabela.

“I’d hardly call you an assassin.” He interrupts Isabela’s protests with, “how many people have you killed for money?”

“Lots, actually,” says another voice - Merrill. She sits down with bread and a hot drink and Fenris growls at how close she is to eir space. “Where do I begin?”

“Point,” says Zevran, because he followed the Warden and knows all about big jobs for small money.

“Does that mean I’m an assassin?” asks Merrill.

“I think what he means is that you’re not part of his precious guild of Crows.”

“Do you want to be?” asks Zevran. “I could do with some members who do not wish to kill me.”

“What makes you think we don’t?” asks Fenris, an evil glint to eir eye. Zevran laughs.

“Oh, I like you,” he says, and lets his gaze linger just a little longer than strictly necessary. Fenris freezes a moment, and then eir eyes slide away. Ey plays the movement as distraction, two figures in heavy cloaks coming in through the door.

“That’s me,” says Varric, tapping his knuckles on the table as he stands up. He frowns at Isabela. “Don’t charge my tab.”

“I won’t let her,” says Merrill, cheerily.

“That’s my girl,” Varric grins.

“Aw, you’re not fun,” says Isabela. “How am I meant to make money if I have to keep spending it on inconsequentials like food?”

“Come work for me!” says Merrill, brightly.

“You? Forgive my disbelief,” says Isabela.

“Raynna wants help.”

“Who is Raynna?”

“She’s an elf.” There is a beat of silence while Merrill waits for a response and the others wait for her to continue talking.

Isabela waves a hand. “More information is required.”

“Oh! She works in hightown. Cleaning old mansions out, that sort of thing. She said I can help her, if I want. Work with Hawke has been a bit slow these past few weeks.”

“Cleaning mansions? Careful, Fen, yours might be next.”

“It’s not as though the bodies smell,” Fenris retorts.

“But the mushrooms do. Can you smoke them?” she suddenly thinks.

“You are not going to try,” Fenris snaps. Isabela only laughs, and turns back to Merrill.

“You are honestly asking me to clean mansions?”

“It’s inside. And if you find something the owner doesn’t want, you get to keep it.”

“Hm, tempting, but I prefer to have guaranteed loot at the end of a day.”

“You merely prefer to steal,” says Fenris, at the same moment that Zevran says, “It is better if it’s stolen, hm?” They look at each other, and Fenris glares at Zevran, eir cheeks suddenly softly pink.

“Well, I’m going to go,” says Merrill. “I get to be indoors and there’s a real cook who’ll give me lunch. So there.”

“That sounds lovely, can I come?” asks Zevran, as she stands up and begins winding her scarf around her neck.

“I don’t know you,” says Merrill, just as sweetly as ever, and with a cheery wave she dashes off.

“Well,” says Zevran.

“Work has been slow lately,” says Isabela.

Fenris shrugs eir shoulders. “You could come with me to help train the new recruits at the barracks.”

“Nah, I’ll leave you to your crush.”

“He’s not -” Isabela cuts em off, leaning over the table to hiss at Zevran, a grin over her face.

“Donnic’s married. And at least a decade older than Fenris.”

“We don’t know that,” Fenris growls. “We don’t know how old I am. And you don’t know how old he is.”

“But you know.”

“I would wager I know many things that you do not,” Fenris sniffs.

“If Hawke doesn’t give us work soon I might have to take you up on that offer,” says Isabela. “There’s only so much money I can make from hustling.”

“You work only for Hawke?” asks Fenris. This is so unlike the Isabela he used to know. She had been a sailor, a pirate, and bowed only to the sea and the weather.

“Don’t give me that tone,” Isabela says, turning a sharp gaze on him. “You followed the Warden.”

“And you know my reasons for that. Why Hawke?” asks Zevran. “What’s her story?" He says it lightly, so it’s clear that he doesn’t need a complete answer, but the curiosity is there and that’s how information travels: stories told in bars to near-strangers. It’s not as though there’s newspapers in Thedas.

Fenris glances at Isabela, who knows Zevran better, and Isabela returns the look because Fenris knows Hawke. Fenris shrugs; ey cannot see any problems with telling the bland facts. It’s nothing more than most people in the bar already know. 

"Hawke," Isabela begins, and doesn’t know where to go from there. 

"She has issues," Fenris supplies, in eir usual gravely growl. "If I cannot say that, no one here can," ey adds, when Zevran raises an eyebrow.

Zevran only has more questions, lips parted slightly in readiness but not wanting to push.

Fenris flicks a long strand of white hair from eir face, a graceful movement. “She and I were involved for a time.”

"Ah.” He had wondered, from the way that Fenris had looked at Hawke, moved around Hawke… He wonders if that was how he had looked for Surana. He hopes so. “I take it you and she are no longer involved?"

"Obviously," snaps Isabela, immediately protective. Fenris gives her a half smile, and looks at Zevran.

"I do not care for sex," Fenris says, flatly, holding Zevran’s gaze. "And she does not care for… what I am." That being an ambiguous jawline and perfectly shaped lips, hard muscles and delicate fingers. Zevran tilts his head and runs his eye over Fenris, heart pounding, and Fenris holds his gaze and dares him to say anything.

"I am sorry that sex kept you apart," Zevran says, honestly, keeping his voice steady beyond the patter in his rib cage. Someone like him, he thinks. He glances at Isabela, who gives a small, knowing smile in return.

Fenris gives a one-shouldered shrug. “As I said, she has her own issues. Her father died in Fereldan, and her sister during the Blight. Her mother was murdered by an insane serial killer in Kirkwall."

"Don’t forget her brother," interrupts Isabela.

"Ah, yes. Carver," Fenris curls eir lip. Ey had liked Carver, until... "Carver joined the Templars."

"I presume his purpose was not to better protect his sister," says Zevran. "Family betrayal is surprisingly common.”

Another one-shouldered shrug from Fenris. “I would not know. It is less that we follow her than she needs us to give her a purpose. She is more our servant than we hers. I would follow her into the Fade…” Eir voice drifts away a moment, and then ey coughs and it comes back stronger, “She has no focus. No purpose. She does what we need her to do because there is nothing else she knows how to do.” Ey looks down at eir hands, fingers picking at a callus. “She is a Ferelden,” ey finishes, quietly. “In every sense of the word.”


	4. Chapter 4

“Oh,” says Hawke. She shifts from foot to foot, a weird movement, her whole body slanted and her head tilted as though light is shining in her face and she’s trying to avoid it. “You’re here.”

“Aye, that I am,” smiles Zevran. “Should I not be? Were you hoping that I would be gone?”

A look to the window, to Varric, eyes sliding down to her dog and then finally at the space over Zevran’s shoulder. A slight nod.

“I can leave,” Zevran suggests. He would rather not. Merrill and Isabela are regaling a tale of some battle long past, and Fenris is chuckling in that way ey has, pretending ey has no sense of humour even as the corner of eir mouth tilts up.

She makes a gesture, gives a sigh, and sits. There is paper in her hand which she gives to Varric. Fenris glares at the dog that sits down near on eir foot even as ey puts a hand down to pet it.

“If it’s Wounded Coast I’m staying fucking home,” says Anders, sitting heavily and dumping his bag on the table. It clanks. Fenris wrinkles eir nose at him and the bag and shifts surreptitiously in eir chair to move further away from Anders. But ey gives him a level nod which Anders returns, so they are not as unfriendly as all that.

“Rain, dear?” asks Isabela. “Your feathers are drooping.”

“Bloody thunderstorm,” says Anders. Fenris tilts eir head. “Or will be,” he adds in a snarky tone.

Fenris glances at the window, but the Hanged Man is too dark and the pane of the glass marked over with dust and grime, so ey cannot see the clouds and judge for emself. Ey is the designated weather-teller in the group, for no reason other than once ey predicted it correctly and ever since has been the one with that duty.

“Perhaps the Rose,” says Isabela.

“Darktown,” Varric declares, and Anders drops his head to the table with a clunk.

“Of bloody course.” He’s always the one on the Darktown missions.

“Bela,” says Hawke. “And Merrill.”

“No big chop-chop?” asks Isabela, hopefully.

“My skills cannot be demeaned by a mere knife-fighter,” Fenris says with a sniff.

“I have got business,” says Varric. He gives the paper back to Hawke. “Unless you wanna go upstairs to get the Choir-Boy.”

“No chance,” says Isabela. “Zev, be a dear and go get my coat.”

“Get it yourself, Captain.”

“Pah, a pox on you,” says Isabela, standing up in a fluid movement that Zevran follows, the line of her thigh above her boots and the high-cut hem of her not-really-a-dress. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” she says, fingers brushing over Hawke’s shoulders as she passes. Hawke leans into the touch, like a dog.

Anders moans a little more and Fenris leans over the table far enough to slap him soundly on the side of the head.

“You’re bothering the dog,” Fenris says, a smug look on eir face.

“Blast the dog.”

Fenris looks suitably offended. “I think not.”

“Children,” Varric chides. He’s pulled a coat on over his clothes, a hood over his head and Bianca on his back.

“You’re taking her for business?” asks Zevran. He’s already heard the story of Bianca, the night before over food and cards, and he can guess at the firepower the crossbow brings to the party.

“Shoot first, questions later,” Varric grins.

“My kind of man,” says Zevran.

Merrill’s chair scrapes as she stands, and she takes the scarf that Isabela offers her. Hawke stands and clicks her tongue for her dog, who lumbers up and bumps his forehead against her knee.

“Play nicely,” says Isabela, addressing Zevran and Fenris.

Fenris raises an eyebrow at Zevran, a challenge, and Zevran feels himself smiling more freely than he is wont to do.

“Don’t get hurt,” he says.

Isabela pouts a moment. “Do I ever?”

“Yes,” say Anders and Hawke together, already on their way down the stairs.

“I have a doctor, what do I care?” Isabela chuckles, nods again to Zevran, and then all in a moment they are gone down the stairs and out of the bar. It is silent in their wake. Fenris shifts a little in eir chair, moving so that ey isn’t angled to take in the now-empty part of the table.

“Do you have plans for the day?” asks Zevran, to Fenris.

“Not today,” ey returns. Ey is leaning back in eir chair a little, falsely relaxed; Zevran can see the tense line of eir shoulders, “Yourself?”

“I would sightsee, only if will rain…” Most likely he will return to Isabela’s room and sleep. She calls him a cat, for the amount of time he sleeps. He figures that for the number of nights he has pushed through not sleeping, the nights on the run or waiting for a mark, he deserves to sleep as long as he likes when he can. He is thinking of soft sheets against his bare back when Fenris speaks.

“Not all the city is open to the air. I could show you.”

Zevran tilts his head. He knows, at least, that Fenris is being honest. There is no ulterior motive, no attempt to get him into bed. “I do hope you’re not suggesting museums and bookstores.”

“Do I look like the reading sort to you?” Fenris counters. Zevran looks at em, up and down, a slow movement that Fenris glares at him through.

“Not particularly. Will I need a knife?”

“This is Kirkwall.”

“I’ll bring two, then?”

“Wise.”


	5. Chapter 5

The weight of the clouds seem about to crush the precarious angles of the roofs, Kirkwall a clutter of houses shoved together in desperation to keep so many people contained within the unmoving walls. It has not yet started to rain, but the air is aching with it. Zevran wishes it would just hurry up and happen, get it over and done with. He has had the same feeling before many battles, an itch beneath the skin that he cannot scratch away.

Fenris is waiting precisely where ey said ey would be, sword attached to eir back and legs crossed at the ankle, leaning on the wall. Eir hands are occupied with a pastry; ey holds out a chunk for Zevran to take.

A few hours have passed since Hawke took the others for a jaunt into Darktown. Zevran dozed lightly, fearful that every noise was Isabela returning. He felt somehow guilty for lazing the day away, as though he must prove himself worthy of remaining in the city. He had wanted to be immediately off on whatever venture Fenris had planned, but Fenris had said ey had an errand to run. In any case, ey had promised, the planned location would be better if it was raining.

But it is not yet raining, and Fenris glances at the sky with an irritated air as ey swallows the last of eir pastry, as though the clouds have opted not to release their weight purely to spite em.

“Where are we going?” asks Zevran. He is not surprised when Fenris only gives him a mysterious sort of smile, humour lingering at the edges, and turns down an alleyway. It twists, and turns, and with the clouds above it is so dark that Zevran, only half an elf, cannot quite see in the dim light.

“This is a poor assassination attempt.”

“Then it is good that it is not one,” Fenris returns.

“I thought you were taking me sight-seeing. I can hardly see a th-oof,” he breaks off to run his knee against a stone jutting out of the wall.

“Careful,” says Fenris. Ey has stopped, spiked edges of eir armour nearly-but-not-quite brushing the walls of the alley. “This city was built for mages. The stones have grooves from the flow of blood used for their spells.” Eir hand closes around Zevran’s wrist, and Zevran is too frozen from the grim two-sentence story to react with more than a half-hearted flinch. “Follow close.”

Zevran obeys, half in a daze. Fenris’ hand is warm on his skin, the scent of eir body is hot against the cold threat of rain. He wants to bury himself in it, nearly as much as -

“Are you alright?” asks Fenris. Ey has stopped again, and again there is concern on eir face.

“Just… memories,” says Zevran. And then, because Fenris has offered a fracture of eir own story, he says, “you have heard of the Hero of Ferelden?”

“Stories of her adventures are common amongst the refugees.”

“She was my…” Lover is not strictly incorrect, but it is inaccurate, but any other word lacks substance. He finds he does not have to explain; Fenris is looking at him with gentle sympathy, demanding nothing more from him. Eir thumb brushes quickly against Zevran’s pulse.

“Come,” ey says, saving Zevran from facing the difficulties of admitting anything close to heartfelt emotion. “We are nearly there.”

 

‘There’ is a rock in the wall that Fenris presses, and then the whole wall shifts and parts.

“I had not thought there would be such tunnels in Kirkwall, though we use them often enough in Antiva.” Fenris gives an eerie smile, and Zevran, feeling giddy in a manner he has not felt in years, follows em through the door.

Beyond the door, which slides shut at Fenris’ touch on a second brick, there is a room large enough to be a foyer to a fashionable mansion. It is filled to the brim with artifacts of all kind, but Fenris keeps pulling him on. Ey has not yet let go of Zevran’s wrist.

The next room is slightly more ordered, things in almost-piles, and one corner looks as though someone has begun sorting through it. Zevran is awed by the sheer number of things. He cannot fathom the calculated fortune in this room.

“Calm yourself,” says Fenris, who is looking at him with a wry grin. They have separated, half a foot of space between them, skin not touching. “This is not what I have brought you here to see.”

“It is enough to excite me into wanting to come here again!” Zevran stares around. “What is this place?”

“A kind of dumping ground. These items all belong to Kirkwall, but they are gifts, or objects out of fashion or favour. I am assisting in the catalogue of them. Actually,” ey ducks eir head and there is a red tinge to eir cheeks, “I am the only cataloguer. It is Sebastian’s duty, but as I have become adept at the task he allows me to do it.”

“How did you get that job?” Zevran blurts without thinking. He would certainly have never asked Fenris to be trapped within a room cluttered with things and then asked em to take inventory.

Another blush, and Fenris does not meet his eye. “I was injured, quite badly. There was, uh. A dragon.”

“You fought a dragon and survived?”

“I said I was injured,” Fenris argued back. “I was unable to fight for nearly a month. I admit, perhaps it was fortuitous. I had little reason to expand my reading ability beyond the most cursory words, but told I could not wield a sword for a month?”

“You kept to Anders’ orders? The animosity between you…”

“He is not my friend, not as Isabela is,” Fenris admits, “but I trust his professional opinion. And, better to have a month feeling hopeless than to cause further damage.”

“Aye, I hear you there,” says Zevran. “I took a blade to my forearm,” he holds it out to reveal the scar, “and was not allowed to do anything except tend camp for three weeks. Though here you have found some task, at least.”

“You had nothing to do?” There is amusement in Fenris’ eyes.

“I am not hopeless,” Zevran protests, “but when compared with my companions, my skills at keeping home are, I admit, rather lacking. My food, for example, focuses rather more on being edible over enjoyable.”

“Ah, you and Hawke alike.” Ey leans close in the manner of someone imparting great wisdom. “Do not eat anything she has prepared, unless she did not prepare it alone.”

“Duly noted,” says Zevran. Fenris regards him a moment, humour still bright in eir eyes, and for that moment Zevran feels like the only important thing in the world.

“Are you telling me," asks Fenris, "in tales of the Hero the elf at her side was not, in fact, present?”

“The stories are greatly exaggerated,” Zevran agrees, thinking of long lazy days in the sun, half-dozing to the sound of Bodahn and Sandal across the way, Wynne or Shale or some other person nearby. Safety in numbers, and while Ferelden crumbled under the weight of the Blight Zevran had never felt so relaxed.

Fenris considers, and then quirks an eyebrow and asks, “You never fought Andraste?”

Zevran lets out a sharp laugh and shakes his head. “That’s one of the stories?”

“One of many.”

“We were all injured for a time, but do not go thinking that I lazed my way through the Blight. I was more than the Warden’s bed-warmer,” he continues, not thinking, and then he bites himself off and cannot speak at all.

“Come on,” says Fenris. “This is not what I wanted to show you.” Ey walks away, and Zevran wants almost to kiss em in sheer relief at not being demanded to empty his secrets, and yet that lack of demand does not leave Zevran feeling invisible, unimportant... Fenris glances over eir shoulder, and Zevran hurries to catch up.

What Fenris wanted to show him is through a few more rooms similar to the first two but more orderly. It is clear that Fenris has been through these; though the things are covered in dust the layer is thin and the objects are neatly arranged. Ey has to open another door - taking eir sword off eir back to wedge it in the winding mechanism and shoving at it with eir shoulder, and Zevran almost offers to help except that ey appears to have done this before, multiple times.

“Ah, good,” says Fenris, even before the machinery has done more than grind together. “It has started to rain.” Ey shoves again at eir sword, and Zevran would complain that no weapon should be treated in such a manner, but the door is opening and he cannot help but gasp at the sight beyond. “I should have told you to close your eyes,” says Fenris. “I think it looks better seen all at once.”

“I beg to disagree,” says Zevran, standing close to the doorway so he can watch as the doors whine slowly apart.

There is a garden, a tangled wilderness of plants, half of which Zevran could scarcely guess at naming. The ground is a mess of dirt and dead leaves and weeds, but it is clear that once there were a maze of ponds and winding water features, now mostly overgrown but somehow more wonderful for it.

It looks like the forest taking over an abandoned city; Zevran has walked through many empty villages, but they all felt dead, lost and lonesome, like a body without soul. This is like too much soul in a tiny body, bursting and taking over. The rain is heavy and rolls down the walls of the courtyard, cascades over plants and fountains alike, pools in the mud and brings endless music to the place.

Zevran needs to hold something, needs to touch something, and he reaches out and finds Fenris’ hand.

“It’s,” he begins, and cannot even begin to figure out the words after that. This is beyond his vocabulary, beyond anything he can ever hope to express. He tightens his grip around Fenris’ fingers; does not even acknowledge that it is eir hand he is holding.

Zevran believes in gods; he must, of course, because he has met Flemeth and walked in the Fade, but this. This is something else entirely.

“I know,” says Fenris. Eir hand is warm in Zevran’s, an unassuming anchor to help him stand still and solid so he swallow the sight he has been given.


	6. Chapter 6

Zevran has nowhere else to go, unless he wants to be alone. Zevran’s entire being is confused. He is used to doing things that he wants, but he has been trained to be a particular somebody and does not always want what he immediately thinks of, so he returns to the Hanged Man and goes to bed under Isabela’ sheets. A few hours before dawn he wakes to feel her slide in beside him.

“Do tell me if I am damaging your reputation,” he says.

“No reputation to damage,” Isabela replies, whispering above the shift of sheets as she tries to get comfortable. “A handsome man like you waiting in my bed?”

“But if you have someone you wish to take to bed -”

“No.” It is too abrupt, and she sighs, reaches out to find his hand and lace their fingers together. “Later.”

Zevran nods against the pillow, knowing she can hear the rustle, and falls back into sleep.

 

He wakes before her, and before everyone else, it seems, so he takes his money and forgoes the Hanged Man. There are places further into the city that do a better breakfast. He seeks them out and finds pastries that look similar to the one that Fenris shared with him the day before. He buys three, and asks the woman attending the stall if she knows where the elf with white hair lives.

Immediately a look crosses her face, as though she has just realised she is looking at a dead man. Zevran has seen that same look passes his way before, and it has never ceased to bother him.

“Why’d you want them?”

Zevran holds up the little bag of pastries he has bought. “To share.”

The look does not go away, but she tells him about a rumour of a mansion in Hightown. Zevran gives her an extra coin, and takes one of the pastries out of the bag to eat along the way.

The door he ends up at looks half rotted. He knocks, because it is polite, and then enters when no one answers, because even if this is not where he can find Fenris - and it seems unlikely, given the decor - Zevran is naturally curious. There are worse ways to spend a morning than exploring an abandoned mansion and eating pastry.

The foyer is heavy with dust, and the air feels damp - more like he is in a cave than a house, and his boot has landed in the soft mush of fungus before he realises the cause for that feeling in the air. What a curious house, he thinks, peeling pastry off in layers and wiping his oily fingers on his shirt between each bite. The decor is expensive, at least from what he can see between the rotted edges.

Purely from force of habit (and this habit he does not mind) he goes through the cupboards and the pots, moving idly through the house and finding nothing he cares to take.

“Can I help you?” Zevran is startled out of rifling through a stack of blankets that look and smell a fair bit cleaner than anything he has found before. He turns, and sees Fenris standing on the landing of the stairs wearing nothing but leggings and a loose grey-white shirt.

“You do live here?”

Fenris steps down gracefully, legs looking longer without the weight of armour above them. “I know it isn’t much, and it isn’t even mine, but,” Fenris has reached the bottom of the stairs, and puts a white-lined hand against the wall. “Yes. I live here.”

Zevran looks up, at the cobwebs strung out over the ceiling and falling down the walls. “Not yours, you say?”

“My former… master. It was his.”

“You took it?”

“He left it behind.” Fenris pushes eir hair out of eir face. It’s not braided, just half-tangled from sleep. “He left me behind. That’s how I got free, the first time.” Zevran wants to ask, but does not want to push, and Fenris gives a small smile into the silence that draws out between them. “The second time, I ran. And then, here - the Hanged Man, actually. I killed him. And my sister. She was working for him. But, she was a slave.” Ey looks down, away from Zevran. When ey speaks, it’s soft. “I regret it.”

“Life is full of regrets,” says Zevran, doing his best to be accepting, undemanding, but supportive. He holds out the bag of pastry. Fenris looks at him with amusement, and then takes the bag and pulls out both pastries. Zevran finishes the last bite of his and takes the second one, splitting into halves.

“What is that for?” asks Fenris.

“You should eat more,” Zevran says. “I stopped eating. After…” He doesn’t like saying her name. “It was the only way to end it. Her dying.” He holds out the pastry again. He feels fragile, and suddenly so. He wants to sit down, needs something to stabilise himself. Fenris eyes him a like he’s a startled horse, and tentatively ey takes the torn piece of pastry.

Zevran quickly takes a bite of his own, to wash away the sour feeling he always has after thinking about the Warden.

“What are you doing here?” asks Fenris.

“Bringing you breakfast.”

“I appreciate it, but the question remains.”

Zevran grins and winks. “I can’t just come visit you?”

Fenris narrows eir eyes at the wink. “I have said that I am not -”

“I know,” says Zevran. “Forgive me. Old habits,” he puts pastry into his mouth to try to keep from saying more. He is unbearably uncomfortable, and wishes that he had not brought up the Warden. He does not like thinking of her, but those thoughts never seem to cease. “Isabela was still sleeping,” he explains, when he has chewed and swallowed and Fenris is still waiting for him to explain. “And since you did not go with them yesterday, I thought that you, at least, would be awake at a reasonable hour. And I am not wrong, am I?” He grins, a little smug.

“No,” Fenris says, slowly. “You are not.” Ey turns back up the stairs, clearly expecting Zevran to follow.

The upper level is marginally cleaner than the lower, and it is obvious that Fenris spends most of eir time here. There is a room with a bed in it, sheets rumpled from sleep, but Fenris takes them past to another room, perhaps once a sitting room, or similar, but now it has a hole in the wall and a desk beside that hole, a heavy blanket hung as an attempt at a curtain. A fire is going to ward against the cold wind, and a kettle hung over the flame.

“Do you drink tea?”

“I do if I am not doing the making,” says Zevran, sitting on the couch. It is long enough that he could lie down on it; there is space that Fenris can sit at the far end without touching Zevran, which is what ey does. Eir white hair tumbles down over eir shoulders, and Zevran wants desperately to push it back. It looks rough and heavy, and imagines it would drag between his fingers. Instead, he peels another layer off his pastry and shoves it into his mouth, watching as Fenris leans forward to take tea from a metal box at the foot of the couch.

It’s clear that ey does this often, perches there to make tea fresh.

“Hawke’s mother got me on it,” says Fenris. “Before she died, they lived in Lowtown. Tea was about the only thing they could do well. Hawke doesn’t care for it, and Carver, from what I know of him, doesn’t like many things at all.”

“He’s the templar.”

Fenris gives a short nod and holds out a mug. “Honey? I don’t have milk.”

“This is fine,” says Zevran. “You forget that I have spent most of my lie travelling. Merely having tea is a luxury.”

“I thought you had spend only your time in Ferelden travelling. Antiva is your home, is it not?”

“It is not.” Zevran holds the mug of tea to his lips, but doesn’t drink. “It was, once, but there are some Crows who spend their whole lives out of home.”

“You do not like Antiva?”

“I love Antiva,” says Zevran. “It reeks in summer and turns foul in winter, and if there is a puddle on the street it might be blood or piss.”

“Or both.”

Zevran concedes with a smile. “I grew up there. How could I not love it? Many of my happiest memories are there.” But that is a lie, and he shifts on the couch and wonders if he should correct himself. These are just the same words that come easily to his tongue always, and he does not know Fenris well but likely ey deserves better. “The Crows created me. I do not know if I like what they made, but,” he shrugs. Honest words do not come easily to his tongue. “I was learning,” he manages to admit. “When she died. She was helping me.”

Fenris regards him silently before giving a slow nod. “I think I understand. The people that I have here, they are helping me. It’s strange to make decisions for myself.”

Something settles within Zevran, and he laughs suddenly, startling himself nearly as much as he startles Fenris. “It is absurd. I presume that others have parents to teach them, but talking with people merely to talk? I know killing and fucking, and everything else is gathering information.” He chuckles again, softer, and shakes his head at the absurdity of it. He’d known that he was a disaster, a crumbled mess torn apart by the Warden’s death - _her sacrifice_ , those words followed him everywhere, and keep following him even here. He cannot think of it is as a _sacrifice_. He cannot think of it, really, at all, except to keep remembering it.

He has seen so many people die, but his hands cannot forget the feel of her body, so startlingly fragile in death, her blood beneath his fingernails and her face blank to his pleas to work one more miracle.

It is horrid, and pathetic, and it is years later but he is still this broken mess of a not-quite person.

He is alarmed that one death has sat with him so long. This is not what he was made to be, but then, nothing of what he is reflects the life he was sold to have.

“Well,” says Fenris, voice light against the sickening dread that Zevran cannot seem to shake from his limbs, “You’re not going to do either of those things with me, and any information you can gather…” Ey turns eir head, a quirk of a grin at the corner of eir lips. “I’m worth a lot of money, but I’ll kill anyone who tries.”

“I haven’t dealt in living bodies in a long time,” says Zevran. He knows the number of his age is too small to be able to phrase anything as having been a long time, but he’s done more in these past few months than most manage in a whole lifetime. Fenris tenses, and Zevran knows he has to expand. “It’s how the Crows get new recruits, often. People apply aplenty, but it’s better to bring them up from youth. Shape them when they’re small.” His lips trace the edges of the mug; the tea is still too hot to drink. The steam warms his face. “I was seven when I was sold.”

“I am told I was born into it,” says Fenris, conversationally, and Zevran wants to laugh that he can talk about something like this so banally, over tea in front of a fire.

“You do not know for certain?” Fenris shakes eir head.

“Ah, I am sorry,” says Zevran. “But you are here now.”

“Yes,” says Fenris. Ey smiles. “And so are you.”

Zevran does not feel entirely settled, but he sips the tea and leans back against the couch, figuring that perhaps this time, whatever good thing that’s starting here, perhaps this time it will stick. 


	7. Chapter 7

Isabela leaps into Zevran’s arms when she sees him, and he catches her and spins her around purely on reflex.

“What’s the matter?” he asks. Isabela is giggling and cheerfully nuzzling his neck, so Zevran looks to Hawke for an answer, though it is Varric that gives it.

“We have been counting money.”

“I can buy a boat,” she says. Her mouth is hot against his neck, and something remembered stirs in him. He untangles himself from her. She goes, easily, grinning and unable to stand still. “A ship. With a mizzen and a jigger and a moonsail staysail royal topgallant…” She spins away from him, jewellery all jingling together. “Jibs and quarters and gundecks and all. A ship,” she says, grabbing his face, nails slightly too sharp against his cheeks. “I’m going to be a captain again.”

“When?” interrupts Fenris, eir voice gravelly against the sing-song delight of Isabela.

“Oh, not today,” she laughs. “You will not be rid of me so soon.”

“Pity,” says Fenris, but it is obvious that ey is glad.

“Kirkwall rarely gets proper ships. I must write to what people I know. I am afraid I’ve lost touch with most of them.”

“I might be able to assist in that,” says Zevran.

Beyond them, Hawke shifts from foot to foot and the dog whines.

“Oh!” exclaims Isabela, remembering. “We also have a job. You can come, I guess. We wanted Fenris.” She narrows her eyes at them. “Why are you two together?”

“We had breakfast,” says Fenris, and Zevran’s stomach twists, skin suddenly all warm. He does not meet Isabela’s eye, knowing that she can read him better than he can himself.

“Breakfast?”

“I had to return the favour,” says Zevran, faintly. “Yesterday ey took me to see the archives.”

“Sebastian’s archives?” asks Varric, who has finished with the papers he was organising and is now doing something to Bianca.

“I rather think they’re mine, now,” says Fenris.

Her mood still there, Isabela grins widely at them.

“You went on a date.”

Zevran almost flinches. He does not date. He doesn’t do… this. Whatever it is. Perhaps once, long ago, but he was different then. But he looks at Fenris, to catch eir reaction, and Fenris gives that almost-suave grin and opens eir mouth.

“I suppose we did.” Ey looks at Zevran, almost shy, but eir words are determined. “I would that we do it again.”

“How’s working for coin?” asks Isabela. She turns to Hawke. "Is he allowed?"

Hawke stares at Zevran unblinking for an uncomfortably long moment. “You are suited,” she says. Then she blinks, as though surprised at her own words. Everyone else just watches her, uncertain about what she is about to do. She just flips her hair, and for a moment looks precisely normal, just any other person living in Kirkwall. Then she looks at them, and that feral look is back in her eye. “Let us go.”

 

 

Fenris walks close to Zevran, and Zevran keeps darting glances at em from between the fall of blond hair. He is uncertain. He always feels uncertain. He does not like it, and grips tight to his knife and waits impatiently for something to happen.

He would like to think that even she did not leave him feeling like this, but that is a lie. She left him bewildered within his own skin, electric pulse and stammering brain. Fenris is the same. He does not know where to put his hands. He does not know where to look. He wants to have Fenris in bed and naked beside him, skin on skin and just breathing each other in. The thought comforts him as much as it alarms him, doubting that Fenris would ever allow such a thing.

It is such a chore, Zevran is thinking, to want without the actual wanting. There is no skeleton he has been given on which to build whatever it is he wants. He must make it up all on his own.

He is thinking that, and darting glances at Fenris, and does not see the rise of a body from the dust.

Fenris leaps forward and slices the thing in two, moving so fast that Zevran is left dry-mouthed at how fast the other elf drew eir sword.

Fenris only gives a sardonic little grin. “You’re welcome,” ey says, and then runs into the fray.

Rewriting brainpaths, the Warden had said once, stroking the tattoos on his face and up, beyond, into his hairline. She had learned such things in the Circle, what little she was taught that was actually useful. Proper anatomical knowledge was rare in general and dangerous information to give to a mage. You are trained to behave in a certain way. It is natural that you’ll find it difficult to act how you truly desire.

Zevran runs his eyes over Fenris, licks his lips and moves into the fight. A creature is rising up out of the dirt a few feet to his right, and he hacks at it with one dagger, and ducks automatically at a cry from behind. Next he looks he sees a crossbow bolt sticking out of the creature’s eye, though it is not yet dead, and then Zevran cuts at its throat with his other knife and the thing falls.

“Assassin!” yells Hawke. Zevran goes, the dog deafening beside him, to help fight away the creatures surrounding Fenris, who has been captured by some spell from the demon.

“Bloodmages,” spits Fenris, when eir mouth is free. Zevran swings a blade and easily cuts at the stuff holding eir sword arm. “I hate the things.”

“Crop up often, here?”

“Yes,” Fenris growls. Ey spits again, lips red with blood. Ey catches Zevran staring. “I’m fine.”

Zevran feels again that heady electric vibe, and he swallows. He shakes it away. “No,” he says. He cannot do this. He will do this fight and he will leave. He decides it, and then he puts out a hand to help Fenris to eir feet.

“A little help?” calls Varric, but Fenris is standing close and eir lips are red, and Zevran wants to never let this go. He feels safer merely from the contact. Settled with his bones all under his skin and his mind suddenly calm.

“Elves!” yells Varric, and the mood is snapped sharp and sudden, Zevran with his knives back with one in each hand and Fenris running, turning blue and whipping through their small battlefield.

When it is over Fenris goes to Varric, who has a small bottle on his belt. Fenris takes a mouthful, swirls it about in eir mouth, and spits into the dirt.

“If it’s lung disease -”

“It’s not,” snaps Fenris.

“Blondie won’t kill you.”

“He might try,” snaps Fenris. “I’m fine.”

“At least self medicate.”

“Don’t I always?” asks Fenris. Ey looks up, at the same moment that Zevran does, as though they are drawn to find their point of connection. Ey smiles, and Zevran cannot help but return it. There is still the weird ashen blood-like stuff dripping from his blades. The contact is so heavy he is too coward to carry it, and he looks away, looks over at Hawke.

She is standing apart from them, even the dog a little distance from her. She has to her what Zevran realises is her typical tilt of her head and the thin press of her lips, and he sees in her a human scarcely contained, emptied by the world and shouldering the weight of it, continuing on only because there is scarcely any other real option.

She is familiar, a memory, a similar stance in an elf that Zevran thinks about always, cannot cease thinking about. He remembers looking at her beneath a sky similar to this. Her hair had been tied back in a black piece of ribbon, too long for the task and frayed at the edges, and the wind had lashed at it, blowing it and hair into her scarred face. Those scars had come over the months that Zevran had been with her - acid burn from flasks landing too close, a dagger to her cheek, a magic blast that left her left jaw grotesquely coloured.

She had stood with her feet firmly planted, an immovable object against the Blight, someone reliable, someone honest in the storm.

And yet, even with Zevran there each night for her, with her dog at her heel and Alistair at her side, Leliana, Morrigan… All of them. A whole group of people following this one elf to save a world that had chewed them up and spat them out, and yet.

For a moment the press of the memory is so much that he stumbles, and he chokes on sudden anger, enraged just as he was in those first weeks that she would choose that. Choose anything other than him, even if he could not speak the words, did not know if he felt them.

He has not remembered so viscerally in such a long time, and he cannot hold it. He stumbles into the underbrush to retch out the contents of his stomach.

When he is done he leans against the thin trunk of a sapling and stares at the dirt. He is so tired of being angry. Of being empty. He had never thought he would ever be this.

No one followed him, but when he returns to the path Fenris looks at him, and Varric tilts his head with honest concern. Zevran can only shake his head. He does not look at Hawke; he would tell someone, this is a woman begging to die, but he thinks they already know. This is why they are here, to give her a reason not to.

His hands feel empty, so he draws one of his daggers just to have something to hold.

The ache in his body shifts into something else, something that is not hopeless. Alistair is still a friend, and Alistair is still out there, and although Zevran is not prone to missing anyone except that dead woman he feels too broken to truly love, in that moment he misses the-not-quite-King.

 

 

 

He thinks, later, that it is a little bizarre - a little too fortuitous - that the only time he thinks about Alistair with more than a fleeting thought, Alistair shows up. The message is waiting for them when they return to Hawke’s house. Dinner is to be eaten here, and Zevran both wants to be alone but knows he needs to be in company, even if he will be a poor conversation partner. He seats himself between Fenris and Hawke, and listens to Varric read out the report without particularly hearing the words. Between himself and Hawke, the dog eats most of their dinners combined.

It is not until he is at the door, Fenris standing close beside and eir lips shaping those words again that Zevran so much as half-registers their meaning.

“The Keep?” he asks. He feels fragile, and wants to pull someone against him for comfort. “You will be there?”

“I will,” says Fenris.

“Then I will go,” says Zevran, who, at that moment, needs no other reason to go anywhere.

Zevran is distracted by some shiny jewels a man is wearing, and he is considering in a habitual sort of way how he would steal them, and does not immediately notice Alistair, who is standing talking to Kirkwall’s Most Powerful, which despite the best efforts of Kirkwall’s Most Powerful, includes Hawke. Except that Hawke does not communicate in a fashion that translates well to international meetings, and so Varric is beside her, and Fenris plays the guard standing a little behind, and Zevran remains distracted by jewellery.

Anders is not with them, which is perhaps a blessing, because Alistair’s retinue includes two other Wardens - an elf and a dwarf, to keep it clear that this is not a conversation between only humans.

Zevran has decided that the best way to steal the jewels would be later, if there is a sit-down meal. There are not so many people that Zevran could easily brush against the man by accident, but given the number he guesses that any dinner would be held in the smaller of the halls, and there Zevran could complete such a task with ease. Having determined that, Zevran is bored again and he looks back towards the group so that he can watch Fenris. It is not as good as a touch but it does a lot to anchor him. He does not know when this mood will pass. He hopes it does, or else he will have to remain with Fenris for always.

So he looks back towards the group gathered in a short distance in front of him, and stops still to see Alistair looking typically uncomfortable with any role of leadership. He’s changed little, thinks Zevran, but he knows the man so well that any change would, perhaps, be inconsequential. The man is dressed far more fancily than Zevran can recall, his hair the same mess as always, and he looks, quite frankly, bewildered by where his life has ended up.

He has taken a step towards Alistair before he has thought of it, and the movement makes Varric turn to see him.

“Ah, this one we haven’t introduced. Zevran Arainai, this is Alistair -”

“We know each other,” Alistair interrupts. “Uh. That is to say -” He, in turn, is interrupted by Zevran, who cannot believe himself but is unable to help himself, and he grabs Alistair by the shoulders and drags him into a hug. He can feel how startled the man is, but it lasts only a moment, and then Alistair is hugging him back.

“You are alive,” says Alistair. “I did not think - I wrote you. But then I did not know where to write to.”

“And I never wrote back,” Zevran says, stepping back and ignored the incredulous looks from the others around.

“This is Zevran?” asks one of the Wardens. There is no tell on their clothes that signal them as more than civilians, but Zevran has learned that particular pattern of desperation etched into a face. “ _The_ Zevran?”

“The Antivan Crow?” asks the dwarf Warden.

“The very same,” says Zevran, giving a sly grin and a slight bow. “Whyever are you here, Alistair? This is rather the opposite of any situation I ever thought I would see you in.”

“Thought you’d find me tripped over in mud with my laces tied together,” Alistair says in a mild sort of voice.

“Something like that,” says Zevran. He is aware that there are other people around, and he does not feel okay having this reunion in public. “Never mind, we can talk later, when you have done with matters of state.”

“I will never be done with matters of state,” Alistair says mournfully. “But yes, we will.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story has gone very differently to how I imagined it to go.

“I thought Ferelden was meant to be the one with the awful weather,” says Alistair.

They’ve ditched the big dinner. Alistair had to wait until an appropriate time, but now he’s here, with Sigrun and Velanna alongside. Hawke’s dining table was made for such a large party but it’s never seen one, and Fenris feels a little overwhelmed by the heat of the bodies. Set into the long wall is a window looking out onto the courtyard that backs onto the mansion. Rather than allow each house their own backyard, the mansions share a courtyard. This one is pretty, Fenris will admit, but ey doesn’t much see the allure of sharing a private space with five other families.

Ey has ventured out into eir own, but that was half curiosity. The back of eir mansion looks as poor as the front, but ey doesn’t care enough about the sensibilities of those that have to look at it to do it up. If someone complains, perhaps, but it is not _eir_ name on the deed, so it is not _eir_ problem.

Through the windows, curtains still open despite the hour, the shadowy light of the other houses reveal that the outside world is nothing much more than rain.

“It is,” says Hawke. “This is worse.”

She’s opened up a little for having someone else from Ferelden here, but only very little. It is Zevran who commandeers much of Alistair’s attention, and Fenris is pretending as though that does not matter.

Ey does not, as a rule, attach emself to people. Ey has enough on eir plate, and is provided with all that ey needs in the friends that ey has. But Zevran is… Not different, but parallel. So much the same that he fits easily into their group.

“I believe it only rains here when it is the season,” says Zevran.

“Same in Ferelden,” grins Alistair. “But it’s just always the season.” Zevran laughs louder than is necessary for that joke, and he is leaning towards Alistair with the casual ease of old friends. Remembering how he called Isabela the same, Fenris feels eir lungs seize up, as though eir ribs are crushing eir lungs.

Ey is saved from any further examination of this by Anders bursting in. He stands in the doorway, looks around the room, and says, “Oh. Shit.” He turns promptly to leave, but Alistair stops him.

That is, Alistair tries to leap out of his chair but gets his dress coat tangled and his boots catch on the edge of Zevran’s, and he falls face-first towards the table. Zevran, far more graceful of the two, stands quickly to get out of the way and in the same moment catches him by the arm and collar, and rights him. Anders has stopped in his escape to stare.

“I’m not going to - yes, thanks, Zev,” Alistair says, taking his hand back from Zevran’s, but allowing the elf to smooth out his collar. “You’re safe, from us. We’re not here for you.”

“Really,” says Anders.

“Really really,” grins Alistair.

“You’re not going to try to catch an apostate mage?”

“You’re still a Warden, with all the trimmings and trappings. Come on,” he cajoles, “sit with us.”

“And Justice?”

“Well, I suppose, but he’s a bit morbid for dinner parties, and I don’t see him around.”

Fenris half expects Justice to show himself, and has steeled eir body against the flair of lyrium that always hits when the spirit appears. Instead, Anders walks into the room wary as a cat around strangers, and shuffles into a seat safely far away from the Wardens.

Meanwhile, Isabela has spent most of the evening trying to remember where she knows Alistair from. He, for his part, claims that there have been an awful lot of pretty faces in his life, to which Zevran had poked him in the ribs and said that age has made him smoother.

“Hah!” she suddenly cries, startling most everyone bar Hawke, but especially startling the dog, who leaps up and stares around as though there is an intruder. Hawke puts her hand down and he runs to it gratefully, shoving his head under her fingers but still alert for danger. “You!”

Everyone stares at her.

“You were with the Hero.”

Alistair looks nervously at Zevran, who shrugs. Isabela is not a force to be explained. “Is that a secret? I didn’t think that was a secret. That’s how I got this gig.”

“There are others better suited,” agrees Velanna. Alistair turns to her, aghast, hand on his chest.

“I am wounded!” he cries. “Better than I? I, my dear, trained -”

“Trained for years in the best schools Ferelden has and some others beside,” says Sigrun. Her hands are greasy from eating dinner with her hands. “Yadda, yadda, yadda. We know. You’ve said.”

Zevran leans close to Alistair, but does not whisper softly, “they do know that you lie?”

“Learned that from the best, too,” says Alistair, twisting so that their faces are close together. Zevran is impressed that the man doesn’t flinch away from being near lip-to-lip with another man, but Fenris can only focus on eir plate and wonder why ey has become so attached to someone who has made it obvious in every manner of his being that he takes nothing seriously.

“It’s scarcely a lie,” Alistair insists.

“The Templars are not a school I would list even on the top ten,” says Zevran. “Or have you forgotten how many we killed, and how easily?”

There is a solemn silence at the table, which Varric breaks.

“You were a Templar?”

“Again, not a secret,” says Alistair.

“But hardly a Templar. You never graduated!”

“For the best, I think! Ne-” Zevran suddenly grabbs Alistair’s hand so forcefully it's almost a punch.

“No,” he says. They stare at each other, but Alistair’s face is soft and he turns his hand to hold Zevran’s in comfort.

“Nevertheless,” he says, not the word he was going to say, “I think I learned enough from them.”

“But you travelled with the Hero,” says Isabela. “Zev, remember that -” She stops, and glances, inexplicably, at Fenris. “Um. There were three of us. At that inn. And this one,” she is on more solid footing here, “This one blushed and refused to even look at me!”

“I was a lad.”

“You were as old as she.” There is no need to ask who they are meaning. “Older, perhaps.”

“Three years,” says Alistair, the words on Zevran’s tongue in the same instant. “And it was embarrassing. There I was, watching that proposition occurring…”

Merrill turns on Isabela. “You had sex with the Hero of Ferelden?”

“I suppose I did, yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“I always do enjoy that sort of thing.”

“Did she?” asks Merrill.

“I think she did. Zevran, what’s your assessment?”

Zevran can remember that night clearly, but he remembers it differently than Isabela. He remembers feeling horribly awkward, two parts of him colliding. Isabela knew him as one person, free and easy, and she had - the Warden, she had seen the same, but she’d been different. She’d wanted him to be more himself, and he’d been trying. Seeing Isabela, having that proposed and unable to say no without betraying the persona he had learned to become, it had been difficult. He had enjoyed it, but only abstractly. If he thought about it too hard he felt sick and cold all over.

“You never disappoint,” he says, with as much vigour as he believes his voice should muster. He looks at Fenris, who is talking to Sebastian rather than look at him, and feels that same wrenching discomfort inside that he has become so used to.

 

 

“Is Anders alright?” asks Alistair. Most of them have left - this is Hawke’s house, so she is here, but she has gone to bed without so much as a word. Sebastian has walked with the other Wardens back to the Keep, and bar Zevran everyone else has gone home. Fenris did not say ey was leaving, only left, and Zevran had looked up a little later to find a space on the couch no longer occupied.

It has just been so long since he has seen Alistair, and it is comforting in a way that being around Isabela is not. Isabela is an old friend, a good friend, but Alistair was _there_. He understands this part of Zevran that he cannot explain properly, or would not, even if he were able to find the words.

“Anders is a little jumpy,” says Zevran. “They all are.”

“You have seen the look on Hawke’s face,” says Alistair. His voice is uncommonly soft, a statement, but tactful. He has grown up, and it is unfamiliar yet pleasant.

“Yes,” says Zevran. He wants to leave before that happens. He has spent too much time around the walking dead.

There is a knock on the door.

“Messeres,” says Bodahn, “unless there is anything you have need of, I am going to turn in.”

“How late is it?” asks Alistair, startled upright.

“Past second bell,” says the dwarf, smothering a yawn. “My apologies -”

“Go,” says Zevran.

He does not, he lingers. “There are rooms made up and ready, if you would prefer not to walk through the city at this hour.” He dips his head in half an apology. “Though no doubt you gentlemen are well used to looking after yourselves.”

“I might take you up on that,” says Alistair. He glances at Zevran.

“Perhaps,” he says. “Goodnight, Bodahn. Apologies for keeping you up so late.”

For a moment Alistair and Zevran sit together in sleepy silence. The fire is dull, merely a flicker of orange against the shadows of night lingering in the corners of the room. Then, Alistair rouses himself.

“Will you stay, or do you have rooms?”

“I have been sharing with Isabela,” Zevran says. He does not quite meet Alistair’s eye, but Alistair travelled with him for long enough to understand him, even when he did not explain himself completely.

“I don’t really sleep alone well, anymore,” says Alistair. “And it’s worse if I don’t know where I am. We can share a room,” he holds out a hand, and Zevran takes it to rise from the couch. “Or a bed, if it comes to that, so long as you’re not about to hate me for not being Isabela.” They make their way out of the room and up the stairs.

“And so long as I’m not going to make anyone your end jealous,” says Zevran, blinking tiredly and attempting a flirtatious look at Alistair. He rather suspects it fails, because rather than blushing, Alistair only gives him a blank look.

“You know,” says Zevran. “A special woman in your life, waiting for you back at Amaranthine. Don’t tell me that elf -”

“No! Maker,” Alistair exclaims. “What do you take me for?”

“She seemed… pleasant. Or there's Sigrun.”

“She believes she is already dead, or good as. I don’t like talking to her about it,” he says. “It’s all very morbid.” He pushes open a door at random and finds that it is an empty room, obviously unoccupied even by some absent person. “This will do us,” he says.

Zevran closes the door behind him, and they cross to opposite sides of the room to undress. It is comfortingly familiar. Merely the sound of Alistair’s breathing, those heavy footsteps, the weight of him sitting on the bed to take off his shoes. They have been in such situations so many times, but so long ago, and Zevran is so tired he half imagines he is dreaming this memory.

“You really have no special woman - or man?” Zevran pauses to look at him with a dirty grin on his face. “You didn’t decide to go down that path without alerting me first, did you?”

“Not that you’d know,” Alistair points out. “Imagine not leaving a posting address!”

“You say that as though you believe all of Thedas to be easily mailed to. Poor little rich boy,” he croons, an old joke that Alistair laughs easily at.

“How do you get messages about work? Assassinating work, I mean.”

“They are left for me at whichever headquarters the person cares to send them to. If I am in the area and needing money, I pick them up. If not,” Zevran shrugs. “Come, now, my friend! The way you always talked left me thinking you’d have a wife and kids and a little farm of fat cows by now.” The light humour that carried them up the stairs drains between that sentence and the next, “Unless you _have_ turned to men.”

“You do know, don’t you?” asks Alistair. Zevran, standing by the window seat and almost undressed to his underthings, shakes his head.

“Know what?”

Alistair has sat down on the bed, and fusses a moment with the covers until his legs are covered. His chest is bare, which is something he would not have used to do around Zevran. He had been so nervous in those days - not because Zevran was so free with his affections, but because Alistair had been so nervous about everything. It is refreshing to see this development.

“It is a Warden secret.”

Zevran waves a hand and finishes folding his shirt. “Ah, say no more. I do not care to hear it.”

But Alistair wants to tell it, because it weighs on him daily, and he blurts it out. “We die young.”

“That does seem to be the norm, no?”

“No,” says Alistair, a little more forcefully. “We… Turn. Into Darkspawn. It’s,” he fiddles again with the covers while Zevran stares at him, aghast. “We die young,” Alistair repeats, simply. “We go mad, and then we die.”

“How young?” asks Zevran. Alistair says nothing, and Zevran has to know. He is desperate for it. “How young?” he near-growls, stepping toward the bed.

Alistair shrugs. “There’s not really been anyone around to ask, lately.” He looks old, all of a sudden, and he is. He is the oldest Warden in Ferelden, and he is still younger than Zevran.

Zevran sits on the bed, near the foot, but then Alistair shoves the covers back for him so he climbs up there and sits on the pillow before shuffling down beneath.

“I did not know. She -” he imagines speaking her name. It would be easy, here, but his throat does not comply. “She never told me that sort of thing. Even… She had dreams.” He glances sideways at Alistair, who nods. He has the same dreams, and always has. He’d had them on the same nights as she had, both of them waking together and shaking. Those nights, the whole camp had awakened. Sometimes she or Alistair would have told them off, but mostly they seemed grateful that there was such an abundance of company. “She never told me what was in them.”

“Warden secrets,” says Alistair.

“I did not mind,” Zevran says. He lies down properly, shifting so that his hand is under head and he is looking slightly upwards at Alistair. “You well know I have my own secrets. Some things are easier that way, hm?”

“Still,” says Alistair. He lies down, then, arms folded beneath his head and staring at the ceiling. “Not much point finding a wife. I’ll never have kids - another secret. I am very bad at keeping them,” he chuckles, but it’s tired, and sad.

“You and I are a little beyond fearing we’ll sell each other.”

“True. Wardens can’t have kids. And in five or two or ten years I’ll go rotten.” He shrugs, and Zevran can feel the movement through the mattress. He thinks about her, about what life they would have had, and it hurts too much so he rolls over and looks at the ceiling.

“You didn’t get the candle,” he says, after a time.

“You got into bed last.”

“You got into bed first,” Zevran retorts, feeling too tired - too _old_ to play this game.

“If Hawke’s a mage we should have something better than a candle,” Alistair grouses as he gets up. The room is plunged into darkness. A moment later, Alistair predictably runs into the edge of the bed, and Zevran sniggers.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” growls Alistair. He gets into bed and ends up too close to Zevran, who still enjoys physical contact and so doesn’t move. He, in turn, is surprised when Alistair doesn’t move either. They lie in silence, each waiting for sleep.

“I’ve missed you,” says Alistair, eventually. His voice is thick and muffled by the pillow.

“And I you, my friend.” Zevran puts a hand on Alistair’s arm, and they fall asleep like that, connected by that small bit of contact and comfortable knowing that the other is there.


	9. Chapter 9

They wake on opposite sides of the bed and both in the same instant, legs splayed so their feet are together. Zevran’s toes flex and brush Alistair’s foot, and he stifles a sudden giggle and promptly falls off the bed. Zevran removes himself from under the covers with far more grace.

Hawke looks at them both with a fairly unimpressed expression, but nods to allow Orana to set them another place. They eat all together, Bodahn and Sandal and Orana sitting with them at the table.

Zevran has only just finished pouring tea for himself and Alistair - each taking as much sugar as they can stand - when the front door opens. Just from the noise it’s immediately apparent who it is.

Isabela and Fenris stumble in, armour clanking and jewels jangling and, more amazingly, both of them in hysterics at something. Behind them is Sebastian, silent, his face set in firm determination to not give into laughter. But it’s obvious that he’s hard pressed, and he separates himself from the other two by sitting at the far end of the table, beside Orana. She turns to him brightly, and they exchange morning pleasantries with ease. It is obvious that they do this often, and Zevran feels calmer than he can remember feeling for years.

He stands.

“There’s bacon?”

“On the sideboard,” says Orana, not standing to serve.

“Some for me?” asks Alistair hopefully.

“Lazy!” cries Zevran, but he stands up and ruffles Alistair’s hair.

“You know, I was going to be king,” Alistair says, mildly, trying to dodge out from under Zevran’s hand. He feels giddy like a child and delightedly so. The worries of being a Warden seem to be lost to the dim firelight of the previous evening. Zevran huffs a laugh and picks up his plate.

“And a dreadful one you would have made. One piece of bacon, or three?”

“You know me,” Alistair says, so Zevran gives him three. “All I’m saying is, I didn’t get born where I was to have my hair ruffled by the likes of you.”

“Born a bastard to a king? Least I had a proper upbringing,” Zevran retorts. It’s a familiar old argument.

“But you couldn’t be king.”

“No, but that’s the ears,” Zevran gestures at them with the spatula before putting it down and carrying both plates back to the table. “They wouldn’t let her for the same, and she’d have been damn better than you.” It feels easier, somehow, to mention her. Hawke doesn’t look at him twice, and Bodahn and Sandal both know who he’s talking about, and understand the weight of emotions behind each remembrance of her.

“Yeah?” Alistair challenges.

“She does- _didn’t_ snore. Though,” Zevran pauses, looking into the air, trying to resettle himself. “I cannot recall you waking me last night with your snoring. Perhaps you’re like wine.”

“If you say-”

“Age has improved you,” Zevran interrupts haughtily.

“You nug. Gimme my bacon.” Alistair snatches the plate out of his hand.

“While you’re up,” says Isabela, holding her plate aloft.

“Maker’s blood,” sighs Zevran. “Did I turn into a servant while I slept? Did you put a spell on me, oh King of Ferelden?” Alistair, mouth full of bacon, stares up at him.

“What?” he asks, muffled.

“Never mind,” sighs Zevran. “How much, Bela? And I suppose the Prince wants, as well.”

“And I, if it is not too much trouble,” says Fenris, not quite looking directly at Zevran.

“More trouble than this?” asks Zevran, balancing all the plates carefully so as not to dislodge the food already on them, “you would have to work at that. Your plate, my friend, and I shall feed you all. Lady Hawke, have you a desire for more?” Hawke shakes her head, but makes a gesture at her dog. “Can’t the mutt feed himself?” Both Hawke and the dog give Zevran a sharp look. “Oh, fine. This is exactly what I was brought to do.”

“You were brought up by whores,” says Isabela, flatly. “All they do is serve.”

“Scarcely brought up by them,” Zevran sniffs. “The bulk of my education happened elsewhere.”

“I believe you assassinated one of my cousins,” adds Sebastian. Everyone looks at him. He shrugs a shoulder and accepts his plate back from Zevran. “Part of being royal is understanding that the assassin is little more than a tool. It is whoever paid you to do such a deed that I should unleash my anger on.”

“Right you are,” says Zevran, tossing the last bits of bacon down to the floor for the dog.

“But you don’t do any unleashing these days,” Isabela purrs. Sebastian goes red just above his collar, and Fenris smirks into eir tea.

Hawke knocks her teacup too loudly down onto the wood, apparently a signal that such conversation should stop. Isabela takes the opportunity to ask Alistair about Amaranthine, and Fenris talks to Hawke, and so breakfast passes comfortably. Orana rises and says that if Hawke is willing, there will be hot water should any of the guests like to bathe before leaving for the day.

Hawke shakes her head and gives an intent stare at Alistair and Zevran.

“I suppose I should,” says Zevran. Hawke gives a long suffering sigh, and touches her hand to her staff. It has been leaning against the back of her chair this whole time, lurking, as though watching guard. With a wave of her hand Zevran is dismissed upstairs, and Orana shows him the way and brings him a towel, promising that he will have clothes that smell fresh and clean by the time he is done.

“What are you doing today?” asks Isabela, of Alistair, who is lining up his knife and fork on his plate and wondering if he can reach the juice, or if he should ask someone to pass it to him. “I could line up entertainment more interesting than more dinners. Remember The Pearl?” she leans forward, arms pushing her breasts forward pointedly. “Unless, of course,” she looks at him, appraising him, “you’re still playing the virgin.”

Unlike when he was younger, he only dips his head a little without blushing: acknowledgement, not embarrassment. “I am.”

At this, Fenris looks up sharply. “But you,” ey begins, and then stops. Alistair is looking at Isabela, who is between shock and approval of Alistair’s honesty, so when Alistair blinks and notices Fenris’ question, he thinks it refers to something else entirely.

“Sure, I’m a grown man, and all that,” he waves a hand. “I don’t see why that means I have to do anything at all.”

“But…” Fenris tries again. All ey can think is that Alistair and Zevran shared a bed, and a spent a whole year together, and ey knows that Zevran and Isabela know each other, are _like_ each other. All that manages to leave eir mouth is, “Zevran.”

“Zev doesn’t, um,” says Alistair, finally fumbling. “He doesn’t do… that. Not at all. Stopped during the Blight, I think. Might have started, but,” he looks from Fenris to Isabela and back again. “Have I said something wrong? It wasn’t a secret, and he likes you. He told me that. Um.” Now, he blushes. “My tent was next to Neria’s, so I kind of.” The tips of his ears are red, and his cheeks are pink. “Heard them.”

“Camps have few secrets,” Isabela grins, looking down the table for Bodahn, but he has taken Sandal and left them.

“I think they could stand to have a few more,” Alistair declares, with some force. “I heard them talking. I didn’t even know - some people aren’t. Um. They don’t.”

Isabela side-eyes Fenris and puts a few words in Alistair’s mouth. “Some people don’t like sex?”

He grabs at them, grateful. “Yes,” he breathes. “Exactly.”

“And Zevran…” Fenris’ brow is drawn together in a scowl, or a frown, or just deep concentration. The difference is nuanced, and unable to tell them apart Alistair feels nervous from it.

“Um.” Alistair stares at Isabela, pleading. He can talk about himself, because over the years he’s become comfortable with that part of himself. It still feels dirty to mention anything like that about other people. It should be done behind closed doors and not discussed candidly in open air amongst uninvolved parties.

“That is Zevran’s to share himself,” says Isabela. Alistair cringes, but then Isabela smiles. “But he has said as much to me.”

“Oh,” says Fenris, a small word. Ey looks down at eir plate.

“I think it is honourable, the choice you have made,” says Sebastian, from the other end of the table. Alistair snaps his head up, grateful for the distraction.

“Any choice a person makes and sticks to is an honourable one,” snaps Alistair, a little rashly because as he repeats it to himself in his mind he realises that it isn’t quite what he means. But no matter, he is always saying things that only half explain the shape of how he sees the world in his mind. “Being true to yourself is honourable,” he tries again. Better, he thinks. “I only think that… that,” he is a grown man, but that word just will not fall from his tongue easily, and at least this way his entire face will not turn red with embarrassment, “is something that should be done for love. And I have never been in love.”

“Some stories told have the Hero falling in love with the Near-King of Ferelden,” says Fenris with curiosity in eir eyes. Alistair laughed.

“ _Zev_ was the only one for her. We were friends, true. Shadow to my soul,” he muses, then looks horrified at himself. “Those are _not_ my words.”

“You don’t have a poetic bone in your body,” Isabela agrees.

“They wrote Zevran out of the stories,” Fenris realises.

“He _is_ an elf,” Alistair says.

“I am aware. I know, of course, of what trials elves suffer here. I did not think…” Ey shakes eir head. “I had hoped that there would be some haven for my kind.”

“Most of Thedas feels that way,” says Sebastian.

“Things are not getting better in Ferelden,” Alistair adds. He feels that same discomfort he always does when he is reminded of how comfortable he is discussing politics. He is surely still too young for this sort of thing. “The Blight did a little to shift attitudes, but only very little.”

“She was a mage, too,” says Hawke. It is the longest sentence she has said in possibly a week, and everyone is startled to hear it.

“Just so,” says Fenris. Ey spreads his hands out on the table and examines eir fingers, leaving the conversation to turn it over and over again with the confines of eir own mind.


	10. Chapter 10

Hawke is grateful for them to leave, for the message that comes asking if they mind heading out of the city to kill some bandits. The Guard is stretched thin and Hawke’s gang is being called on more and more often to complete their tasks. Once, Hawke would not have minded. She had worked a year as a mercenary, and she knew the nature of the city she has chosen as home. She had needed the money back then, and the occupation. Now, though. Now she does not light candles and spends too long sitting staring at nothing.

Her house is too large for so few people.

If Zevran had known Fenris years ago he might have been surprised at em now, insisting that Hawke - a mage - travel with them. Instead he is only surprised that there is an official capacity for Hawke to use her magic. He wants to ask but knows he won’t get an answer, and Isabela is with Merrill.

She’s often with Merrill, boldly seeking her out but suddenly shy in her presence.

Zevran sidles up to Varric, who walks with his crossbow in lieu of walking alone.

“Is it just me, or has Merrill found herself an admirer?”

“You know how long we’ve been in this city together?” asks Varric, instead of answering. “Five years, now.” He gestures at Hawke, her staff slung over her back as though it is safe to do so. For her, Zevran was realising, perhaps it is. “She came over from Ferelden, paid her way, and now here we are. It’s a long enough time to be doing anything with the same group of people.”

“You’re telling me yes about Merrill and Isabela.”

“I’m telling you that you’re not part of this set, for all that you’re making strides to be.”

“I do not wish to step where I am not wanted,” says Zevran, feet falling out of sync with Varric’s.

“Hawke has not said no.”

“Would she, though?” asks Zevran, a small joke that falls flat, and he nearly trips for the look that Varric gives him. “I would leave if I were not wanted,” Zevran insists. “None have yet said that I am not. And so, I stay.”

Varric gives him a sweeping look and a stern “hm”. At that moment Fenris turns and meets Zevran’s eye. Not eager to be so near to Hawke but eager to be out of Varric’s immediate consideration Zevran takes a few hurried steps to catch up. Fenris, in situations like this, is apparently only slightly less taciturn than Hawke, and so it is a silent walk out of the city. Zevran almost wonders if perhaps he should have stayed behind with Alistair, although Alistair’s schedule for the day sounded appalling.

“Are you alright?” asks Fenris, when they have stopped to ready themselves, having come close to where the bandits are said to be hiding.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” asks Zevran.

“You seem out of sorts. You’ve been quiet.”

“No one has seemed willing for conversation.”

“We are very bad at reciprocation,” Isabela agrees. “You should teach us how those in the big city do it.”

“Isabela, you wound!” laughs Zevran. “I had thought I’d taught you all I know.”

“Quiet,” snaps Fenris, and the moment there is a hush they can hear what ey heard: the sound of armour clinking together. Fenris looks over at Zevran, a look that would have once had Zevran expecting a locked door and an empty bed. He repositions his grip on his knives. “Ready?” ey asks. Eir voice sends a shiver up Zevran’s spine. He can only nod in response. There is the clash of Isabela’s blades on someone’s vambrace, and then they are in the fray.

Zevran keeps close to Fenris, distance enough to avoid the whirling blue of eir longsword but close enough that they are a pair. The bandits are well organised, and Zevran is conscious that he is an intruder into this group, the Kirkwall Gang. He does not want to bring anyone to harm because he did not know how to work around them.

It begins to rain midway through the battle, and Zevran notices only then that there is a cut on his thigh, the rain painful against the raw skin. By the end of the battle he is too out of sorts to do anything at all. He watches listlessly as Isabela picks the bodies clean of money, and Varric goes through the chests.

“Are you alright?” asks Fenris again, but this time it is about Zevran’s physical wellbeing. The wound has clotted, blood dried in a watery brown streak over his knee. He shrugs in response, though, not willing to give voice to either a lie or to honesty.

Despite how comfortable he woke up he is almost embarrassed by his night spent with Alistair. For needing, and demanding place where he had not found home in so long. How could he have imposed on Hawke’s hospitality like that? How could he have expected Alistair to simply let him fit into his life again? And what next? The Wardens will leave, and it is obvious that Zevran cannot fit here. Kirkwall is as foreign to him as Orlais. Perhaps it is worse, here. There he was obvious as a foreigner. Kirkwall’s language is blood and misery, yet still Zevran feels out of sorts.

He wonders if he could find that horse again. The road out of the city is not too far from here, and he brought in as little as he is wearing now. ‘To where’ does not matter so much as ‘away’.

They are almost back at the city before Zevran realises that he had not thought about her for the whole venture. For so long he has been terrified of forgetting.

He wonders if this is the start. 


	11. Chapter 11

They arrive back at the city and part in ways that are familiar to them but not to Zevran. It is ridiculous that he feels so out of place when it is natural that he would be. It is simply that he is use to barging in and not apologising, taking what he is given and not wondering if he has put anyone out with his requests. If he asks and they give, their unhappiness is not his problem. They could have decided to say no.

At least he is soaked through, hair sticking to the back of his neck and backs of his legs flecked with mud. It gives him a reason to claim he does not want to stay at the Hanged Man. He goes uptown to a more respectable place, where they sneer at him for his ears but take his money all the same. The water they give him for a bath is scented.

He washes standing up first, wiping himself down, the sloped floor grainy beneath his feet and the water so warm it feels as if it is burning his skin. When the mud is gone he gets into the bath, trying to twist himself so that the cut on his leg is not under the water. The oil stings it. It is such a small thing, but he is too weary to shoulder through even that amount of pain.

A handmaiden has left towels on the rack and there is a bathrobe hanging behind the door. When the water is getting close to be too cold he gets out, muscles weak. There is a fire going, his whole room warm. It is a delightful little place, better lit and more clean than the Hanged Man. His clothes have been taken to be clean, leaving him with the bathrobe for the night. His boots are on the tiles in the bathroom; he refuses to have them touched by anyone who isn’t him. He has washed the mud off and will polish them later. When he is less tired.

He lies down on the bed and wakes up some time later to a knock on the door.

“Serrah?” asks the manservant. “There is a woman who wishes to see you.”

Zevran blinks and yawns, and the man lowers his voice a little to add, “she is one of Hawke’s followers.” He sounds more than a little awed.

“Send them up,” says Zevran. “And food.”

“For two?”

“Sure,” says Zevran, flopping back onto the bed.

 

“You seemed out of sorts,” Fenris says, when the door has been closed for long enough that the crackling of the fire seems muted in the silence gaping between them.

Zevran continues to languish on the bed.

“I am very bad at providing comfort.”

“Then why come?” asks Zevran, momentarily irritated. He lapses immediately back into pathetic moodiness.

“I would prefer to provide poor comfort than none at all.”

Zevran sits up. “I am being perverse. I am glad you’re here. Come,” he slaps the mattress beside him. “Sit.”

Sitting turns eir fidgeting reverberating through the mattress, and it is all Zevran can do to not grab eir hands to make them still.

“Do you want to talk about what the problem is?” Fenris asks.

Zevran fiddles with the edge of the blanket, hoping that food will come interrupt this conversation. “No.”

“I need to confess something.” Fenris is not meeting his eye, facing the same direction as Zevran across the room at the fire. “This morning, Alistair was talking of you.” Fenris darts eir eyes at Zevran, long white strands of hair wet from rain and gone blue-grey because of it.

“I’m sure he had many stories to tell,” Zevran says lightly. His mouth feels empty, his lips dry. He knows that once he would have turned this conversation into empty platitudes and taken the other to bed. He cannot decide if he is glad to know that Fenris would refuse him. It means he must continue here, listening to whatever Alistair has told about him.

“He mentioned the Warden. And your relationship with her.”

Zevran grips the sheets, throat strangled, empty of air. He wants to make em stop speaking.

Fenris half turns, twisting the sheets around with eir thigh to look at Zevran across the expanse of the bed. “You don’t have sex.”

With a shaky laugh Zevran dismisses the statement. “I was raised by whores and trained by the Crows.”

“He said you do not like sex, and Isabela agreed.”

“Implicate her, hm?” growls Zevran. He is shaking. He cannot believe that he is shaking. “Well, suppose it is true,” he starts. The wood on the door rattles from a knock heralding food.

There is a table, but they have the servant set it on the bed. It is not, Zevran reasons, as though it is going to be used for any more exciting purposes. The manservant does not look Fenris in the eye. He calls em ‘m’am’. He is awed, too, of Zevran, but not so much that he doesn’t linger, watching Zevran fishing a coin from his purse to toss as a tip.

“You were saying,” says Fenris. Ey does not make a move for the food.

The unended sentence is a sour taste in Zevran’s mouth. The food is covered, and his fingers twitch to find that distraction. “If it is true. What do you care about it?”

“I don’t,” Fenris retorts, but eir voice wavers and the last night dies in eir throat. “I do. I have enjoyed my time with you. I worried that you would abandon me in favour of something more,” ey breaks off, searching for the right word.

“You thought I was sleeping with Alistair,” Zevran says, voice flat. “Or Isabela.”

Fenris shrugs, trying to refuse embarrassment though finds him all the same. “You cannot argue it was not a logical assumption. Isabela has many _friends_.” 

“What do you care?”

Fenris’ skin is not so dark that Zevran cannot see the faint blush that appears across eir cheeks. “I like you.”

That, Zevran doesn’t fully believe. “And Hawke?”

“Can I not care for more than one person? Must I be limited?” The tension between them is unwanted, an accidental crafting. “I like you,” Fenris repeats. “I do not know how long you intend to be in this city for, but so long as you are here I would spend time with you. I would find that easier if I were not accidentally implying something I do not want.”

“I don’t like sex,” Zevran decides to admit. “And not having is. I do not understand how to do it. That kind of… relationship,” is the word he settles on. He swallows. “I am more used to being alone.”

Fenris is still waiting, wanting confirmation that ey is welcome. Zevran only lifts one of the covers to fill the room with steam-carried smells. Uncertain if ey is welcome Fenris does the same with the plate on eir side.

After a few minutes of eating quietly, Fenris smirks at Zevran. “I like your clothes.”

Zevran pulls the robe tighter around his chest and glares. “They got covered in mud.”

“You look very dashing.”

“I’m sure," he says, a wry smile across his lips. “Ready to save those in distress.”


	12. Chapter 12

“Tevinters are an all-or-nothing sort of people,” says Fenris. Zevran has remained in his robe, although his clothes have returned clean and dry. It’s raining again. Obstinately, Fenris has opened the doors onto the balcony. They’re on the floor, thickly carpeted with a rug over the top. Probably to hide some stain or other. The rain is loud against their words. It smells sweeter than Kirkwall could ever manage, some kind memory of a distance place carried in the clouds.

Fenris’ comment is apropos of nothing. They were talking of ribbons, a sidetrack from talking of Orana, from talking about elves and their oppression.

It is so strange to feel part of an oppressed group. Zevran does not feel like a minority, for all that he was sold and enslaved, intended to die in the event of failure. He feels mostly tired of the whole thing, of needing to have opinions about it.

“I hate Tevinter,” Fenris continues, voice more musing than emotional. “But I am from there.”

“War on the Qun, and all?” comments Zevran, when Fenris falls silent.

“Hm? No. I admire the qunari.”

“A turn to the Qun kind of admiration?”

“I prefer my freedom. They have no choice. And what they do to their mages,” eir voice turns suddenly furious. “They - Anders and Merrill, they think I hate mages.”

Zevran had thought the same. “You do not?”

“The Magisters did this to me,” ey lifts eir hand up toward the roof, firelight scattering over the reflection of the lyrium. With the rain behind Zevran is reminded of lightning. Without thinking he raises his hand to touch. The lines feel nothing like a scar. They’re softer, alive. A scar is dead tissue, but the lyrium is a gateway. He runs his fingers up Fenris’ forearm, head spinning as though he is about to fall headfirst into the Fade.

“I do not trust them,” Fenris says. Eir voice is soft, eyes following Zevran’s hand on eir arm. “I think they should be guarded. Watched. Mages bring out demons, but freedom is important.” Ey tips eir head on the carpet to look at Zevran, lacing their fingers together. Zevran can still feel the shimmering edges of lyrium. He wonders what it would feel like if he were a mage. “I do not like what the Qun demands of mages. Saarebas,” ey spits. “They are dangerous, but they are not things.”

“It is complicated,” says Zevran, thinking of the conversations they have had already that night, words still freshly trailing in the air: elves and the Dalish and the shem and the fraught relationships between.

“If Carver had not run to the Templars I think I would not care the same.”

Zevran makes another humming noise. Fenris kept doing this, alluding to things that Zevran had not been present to have an opinion on.

“All of me hated him.”

“Carver?”

“Danarius. It was complete.” Fenris tightens eir grip on Zevran’s hand, nails digging in. “My fingertips hated him. I wanted to claw his eyes out. Now he is dead and I am empty.” Ey smiles soft and sarcastic. “All-or-nothing.”

Zevran hums into the silence. Fenris settles their hands together on eir stomach, muscles tightening slightly with each breath.

“I would die for Hawke,” says Fenris. “If she asked.”

“She’d die for you.”

“She is dying for me,” Fenris corrects. “For all of us.” Ey continues in a whisper, mostly to emself. “I don’t know how to stop it.”

Zevran shifts the angle of his hips on the carpet. “The Warden died. Morrigan told me she had a plan so that no one would have to die to kill the Arch-Demon.”

“Tit-for-tat?”

Zevran nods.

“Do you believe in the Maker?” The question is so sudden that Zevran needs to move past his initial astonishment to begin answering it.

“Believe he exists or believe in him?” he asks. “I was there when she found Andraste’s ashes. The things I saw in that temple have left me unable to not believe. Perhaps it is not faith, it is knowledge, but I have not seen him. I merely have more dots to connect than the common person, no? But believe in him?” He rolls onto his shoulder so he can look at Fenris. Ey is sprawled out, head pillowed on eir forearm, hair streaking over the faded blue carpet. Zevran wants to run a finger down eir forehead, feel that elvish lack of indentation where the nose runs between the eyes.

He turns his hand into a fist and digs his nails into his palm. He does not know if he can limit himself to merely that one touch. “I don’t believe in anyone.”

“I believe in Hawke,” says Fenris.

“I’m not surprised.”

Fenris looks at him, considering. “Did you believe in her?”

“She died,” Zevran says. The words are off his tongue before he has chance to think them through. He wants to haul them back, needs to swallow them away. Instead, they just keep bubbling out. “I believed her, and she died. What kind of god can die? I did not,” he chokes on the words. This is his shame, his one horrid thing he can scarcely allow himself to think. “I did not love her.”

Fenris hand grips his tighter, meeting his gaze.

“I think I am broken,” Zevran says. He has to look away from Fenris. He examines the ceiling for shapes, as though there are constellations there in the wood he can flee to. He is not crying, not quite, but his voice is choked and he cannot think through the whirling mire of his mind. “I wanted to. I used to believe it was all a terrible trick everyone else was playing on me.”

“I thought the same,” says Fenris. “To Danarius I was a thing. I was encouraged to have sex.” Ey side-eyes Zevran. “It keeps the slaves tethered to each other. One slave might slip free, but two together?”

“Did you?” Zevran is curious and feels rude because of it, but Fenris accepts his question without concern.

“I did not like to. Other people seem to fit in their bodies. This is not mine,” ey raises an arm. “I have never felt at home with this skin. But still, even without that leashing me to him I did not try to escape.” Ey blinks and looks up at the ceiling. “The problems are not the same,” ey apologises. “I should not compare them.”

“We’re a proper tragedy.”

“Not one worth writing,” Fenris laughs, a little sadly. “Nothing Varric would put into his stories.”

“Thank the Maker.”

They are silent, sobered into contemplating their own thoughts.

“I pretend I choose to follow Hawke, but what do I know of choice? What do I know of freedom? Anything I do is a mockery.”

Zevran shifts his hips again, and Fenris moves eir arm, inviting him. They readjust, Zevran resting his head on Fenris’ bicep. For reasons Fenris can never explain ey feels better on the floor than a bed. In eir mansion ey has pulled the mattress from the bed so ey can sleep closer to the ground. What creates a feeling of security, ey thinks, is a senseless thing.

“Freedom is a lie,” says Zevran. “I tell myself I make my own path, but here I am, still doing the same job I was sold for.” He closes his eyes and breathes in. “I am so tired of myself.” He rocks his head against Fenris’ arm. “Half of me is busy imagining rolling over and having my way with you. If not for the fact that I know you are not interested I would probably have done so already. I cannot work out if I am glad for that.”

“I can move,” Fenris starts to do as much and Zevran puts a hand down, finding the sharp rise of Fenris’ hip bone.

“No. It is only a habit. A reflex I wish would go away.”

“Ah.” Ey is silent a moment before offering up, “I cannot manage dark rooms. Thankfully I have these,” Zevran feels a tingle over his skin. The blue glow is almost swallowed by the light already in the room. “I cannot be in a room with closed doors.”

The rain through the open balcony doors is loud, and now Zevran understands why. “I cannot sleep, if I am alone,” he says. “A few hours at best.” He had not thought of tonight, but had felt so out of place amongst the others that he had not thought ahead. Guilty as he feels for taking space beside Isabela, at least he can sleep through the night. Fenris makes a small, sad noise. Zevran shrugs against em. “I am used to it.”

“Would you like me to sleep here with you tonight?”

The immediate desire is to refuse, and when that is swallowed down he wants only to ask why. But he knows why: Fenris has said it. Eir hand is still on Zevran’s. Ey came here. Ey stayed, when ey could have easily gone as soon as the food was eaten.

“I cannot offer you anything,” says Zevran. “I will not ever love you.”

Fenris is unable to keep from feeling automatically hurt by that, and ey has to still emself to keep from responding too soon.

“It’s only one night,” ey says carefully.

“It’s not,” Zevran says, and Fenris knows he is right.

“Does it matter?”

“When your choice of god falls and I cannot give what you want? Yes.” His voice is venom. He twists and lifts a hand, giving into temptation, and brushes his fingertips against the corner of Fenris’ lips. “I’ve been there. You need someone who loves you.”

“You’re no seer.”

Zevran wants to expand on the desire for the end that he sees in Hawke’s eye. The same look he remembers in Neira’s eye close to the end. That tiredness, that hope that tomorrow would be the last day. The inability to see a future beyond. Fenris speaks before Zevran can find the right words to explain.

“I will stay, if you will have me. This is a promise only for tonight.” Zevran can recognise the lie in the words. Fenris is limiting emself to only what ey thinks Zevran will take. Giving as much as ey dares to give without being refused. His heart sinks, guilty for making Fenris feel that ey must pretend to feel less than ey does. “Whatever tomorrow brings, it will bring.”

“Liar,” says Zevran. He rolls onto his side so he is looking down at Fenris. “You want me to remain for longer than you think I would stay.”

“I cannot demand that.”

“Stating your desires is not demanding them of me. Cards on the table.” He regrets propping himself up on his elbow because now he feels he is trapped looking at Fenris, exposed. It was easier lying on his back searching for patterns in the ceiling. “I have no idea how to continue whatever this is. The closest to any,” he fumbles, as always, for the right word. It is not a romance. It is not sexual.

“Relationship.”

Zevran grimaces slightly. “Yes. Was her. And, as is told in taverns by bards with singing voices worse than even I, our relationship ended abruptly.”

“Through no fault of your own.”

“I do not blame myself,” says Zevran, which is a lie he says so often it feels almost like the truth, so long as he does not think about it. He blames himself in odd and insidious ways.

“Come to Mountain with me tomorrow,” Fenris half-interrupts.

“Why?”

“You don’t know how this will work. That is your fear. I have friends.”

“I have friends,” Zevran retorts.

“I would bet on your friends being contacts who have not yet died. I have friends. Their friendship seems to me entirely by accident, but of the two of us I think I am better equipped to guide you.” Ey pauses to muse on that a moment. “Maker help us.” Ey looks up at Zevran. “I have promised Donnic to accompany him on a patrol near the Mountain. There are precious few recruits and he’d like them to survive their training. Come with me.”

Zevran eyes em suspiciously. “Is this a date?”

“Yes. I do not think you’ll take kindly to me merely telling you what I want. So, come to the Mountain with me.” There is an iota of fear in Fenris’ eyes, but it is masked through habitual practice.

Zevran is not the only one who wants so much to break things that are too much a part of the jigsaw that makes him.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Alright, yes, you have convinced me. I will go with you to the Mountain. I will not refuse your wanting, even if I think it is a mistake.”

This time, it is Fenris who brushes eir fingers down Zevran’s face, the side without tattoos, the side that hardly ever gets touched. “I try not to make mistakes. I have made too many already.”


	13. Chapter 13

There’s a body to loot, and old habits die hard, so Zevran comes to the top of the staircase a few steps behind Fenris. Donnic - he presumes it is Donnic, the guard’s eyes tight with stress. So common amongst leaders, and something Zevran is familiar with.

“Who’s this?” Donnic asks, no hello, no moment without suspicion.

“He’s with me,” says Fenris. “I invited him along.”

“I have enough to look after,” says Donnic. His recruits are standing at ease a short distance away. They are watching the exchange with interest.

“I assure you, I can look after myself.” Donnic does not look convinced. He looks at Fenris.

“It’s on your head if he carks it.”

“He won’t,” says Fenris, and ey turns, hair in eyes, to catch Zevran’s gaze and ey grins. Just one corner of eir lip lifting in humour, and then it is gone away to bitter stone as Donnic turns to the recruits.

“Right, listen up. This is Fenris, ey’ll be accompanying us in case we hit trouble. And this is -”

“Zevran Arainai, at your service,” Zevran gives a slight bow.

“Zevran. Right.” Donnic gives Zevran a look that indicates quite clearly how long he believes Zevran would survive in a proper fight, and goes back to addressing his recruits. Fenris casts an eye upwards, judging the clouds. Zevran looks askance of em, but ey only shakes eir head. No rain today.

 

 

“One day I’d like to not be fighting dead things,” Zevran says, wiping the brown clotted blood from his blade. It’s difficult: dried, torn flesh caught in the fuller and old blood smeared over the metal. There’s runes tied into the blade, which makes it worse. The electricity doesn’t care for the difference between friend and foe.

“You’ve fought a lot of them?” asks one of the recruits - Swift, the others call her. She’s possibly half elf, but she could just be a fade-touched human. She’s weird looking and flighty, not bad with a blade but she’ll have to be better if she’s going to survive long in Kirkwall’s guard.

“Darkspawn. Demons.” He casts his eyes over the creatures they had to kill. “Corpses.”

“Demons are the worst,” Fenris supplies.

“Seen a lot of them?” That one’s Tammis. She’s built like a qunari, with a glare to match. Zevran would bet his boots on her having been a wrestler before finding herself a job that didn’t rely on the gamblers.

“I’ve seen enough,” says Fenris.

“Bloody mages,” growls Hara, one of the archers.

“Champion of Kirkwall’s a mage,” Donnic says, where he is finishing up banding one of the recruit’s forearms.

“Hero of Ferelden was, too,” Zevran adds, but he isn’t in the mood for teaching foreign children of people dead for too long to still hurt so much.

“These were just corpses,” says Fenris. “You’ll see a lot of them in graveyards up here.”

“The Dalish leave them,” the second archer, Chad, spits out. “You should burn your dead.”

“The Dalish carry the proper rituals,” snaps Donnic.

“If you have a mage your dead will not rise,” Fenris says, eir voice tired. “The Dalish in these hills are not true to their gods. If they were, they would have moved on.”

“I did not mean to cause offence,” Chad tries to backtrack.

Zevran laughs at him. “It doesn’t take pointy ears and inked up faces to turn a person Dalish. If we were to come across any Fenris and I would have more problems than you. Last Dales I met would not let me tread their paths or eat the food from their land.”

“The land belongs to us all.”

“Unless you’re a human,” Fenris says, under eir breath. “And then you can take.”

“Did you show them what for?” asks Swift.

“In a way,” says Zevran. Payment to kill a Dalish was rare, but happened on occasion.

“Why do the dead rise?” asks Hara.

“Too close to the Fade,” says Fenris.

“I was told it happens if the Fade is close but not open,” Zevran offers. “Like a too-small doorway, hm?”

“Perhaps.” Fenris shrugs. “I only know what Hawke suggested.”

 

They continue on around Sundermount. The sun is setting by the time they see the city again, coast squashing it into the mountains. There is no space, no breathing room. It is no wonder that the city is so decayed, unable to get oxygen to survive.

The first group of corpses were nothing. The Tal-Vashoth they meet are a different matter entirely.

“Fuck,” Donnic says, low enough that no one can hear him. They can only see the horns over a rise. There are other guards who can deal with qunari fallen from the Qun far better than these wet-behind-the-ears kids still getting acquainted with the pointy end of a sword. Before he can whisper a retreat and a reroute the qunari spies them and hails out a call to others behind. “Fenris, take lead. Archers, high. Zevran -”

“I’m with Fenris,” says Zevran, daggers in his hands.

“Okay. Don’t take risks. I’m taking you home and not in halves.”

 

It’s Chad that falls, a qunari reaching up almost casually to drag him by the ankle from his perch. Zevran runs, leaps from ground to rock and lands one foot on the back of the qunari to stab one of his blades into the creature. It does not quite hit its target, slicing muscle but not deep enough to carry through the berserker rage the man has unleashed.

Unbalanced and perched on top a man seeing only red and intent on tearing the archer limb from limb, Zevran tumbles without grace to the ground. He lunges at an ankle, tries to slice the tendon behind the bare knee. The electricity crackles and the qunari jolts, dropping Chad. He scrambles to catch Zevran, who rolls away and comes up ready to fight.

“Bull-head!” yells Fenris. Eir fringe is dripping blood not eir own, blade crackling a different kind of blue to Zevran’s electric runes.

They are a pair, Fenris slight and loud and hair falling out of its braid. Zevran is larger but quieter, deadly as he fades into oblivion and waits for Fenris to hold the qunari’s full attention before he stabs twice at the bare shoulders, again at the neck. Fenris drives eir sword full through the armour and belly together.

“Are you wounded?” Zevran gasps, back of his throat dry with that familiar burn of exertion. Chad’s face is white but he shakes his head with determination. Hara is beside them and puts out her hand to pull him upright.

“Good work,” she says.

“Where’s Donnic?”

“Down the way a little,” Hara says. Zevran gathers up his weapons to run down the sandy path, but finds there is nothing he need do. Fenris has cut someone’s face in half, while Donnic drives his shield hard into another’s stomach, slashing at the throat with his sword.

 

 

Despite Fenris’ premonitions, it starts to rain just as they come over the rise that slopes down towards the city gates. Anders is there, a bag slung over his shoulder. Leaves poke out of it.

He is not excited to see them. He ducks his head away from Donnic, and it’s only Zevran’s cheery nod hello that gets him falling alongside.

“You’ve been out on patrol?”

“Fenris invited me. Apparently the aim is to keep these from falling over their feet onto their swords.”

“They’re not all that bad,” Fenris adds, eir voice a growl. The rain has loosed the blood from eir hair. Red runs down eir face in thin rivulets. “Faced qunari and came out clean.”

“Fenris helped,” Zevran says, offering the other elf a glance that Anders thinks is entirely too familiar. It makes more sense when he notices that Fenris’ response is to brush eir fingers against Zevran’s hand.

“I was out picking herbs. Running low on elfroot and no one else has bought me any.”

“Plenty of rain for it,” comment Zevran, Fenris offering nothing. Fenris has scarcely even looked at the man. “Elfroot, that is. It grows in rain, no?”

“Better rain than sun. Ferelden was rife.”

“I recall,” says Zevran. “She -” Fenris’ gauntlet has caught on an old scar and nicked his skin. He flinches, not entirely from the words on his tongue. “Have you had many problems? For a mage Kirkwall is not friendly, hm?”

Fenris snorts a laugh, while Anders gives a weird, angry sort of smile. “Hawke assists.”

“She is also a mage,” Zevran points out. This has been lingering on his mind, with the templars lurking so loudly in every corner. “Though I suppose her position as Champion helps her. As does yours as Warden, come to think of it.”

“There’s not much protection for a runaway Warden mage five years from the Blight,” says Anders. “Alistair vouched for me, back at Amaranthine.”

“I know,” says Zevran. “He wrote it to me.”

“Well, he’s here now, but it’s not as though he’s going to stick around.”

“And returning to the Wardens..?”

“To ferreting out dribbles of darkspawn and listening to Sigrun talk of how she is already dead? I am far happier here. Hawke is Champion and Aveline does more than her due. I am safe enough, and there is work to be done.”

Fenris lets out a loud sigh and conspicuously decides there is something ey must discuss ahead with Donnic. Curious, Zevran can only ask, “The clinic?”

“If I wanted to treat the injured I could go anywhere. I talk of greater work.”

“There is greater work for a healer than healing?”

“What opinions do you have about the treatment of mages in Circles?”

Zevran feels an overwhelming trepidation overtake him. “I travelled with the Hero of Ferelden for a time, as I am certain you already know, hm?” Anders bobs his head, eyes a haze of unnatural blue. Zevran looks ahead, to where Fenris is ignoring them. “Elves fair poorly in spaces created by the Chantry. We are not loved.” It feels like a lie, bitter on his tongue. He does not consider the elves his people. “There must be a better way to keep the demons safe away than to steal children.”

“I think the templars are evil.”

“I would not directly contest that, but I feel you are implying something far greater than I have the knowledge to counter.”

Obviously wanting to discuss it further, Anders is irritated that they have reached the gates. “I will give you a pamphlet next I see you.”

“I will read it,” Zevran promises, not a lie, but he cannot be bothered with sacred causes. He has had enough of those for a lifetime.

The city gates are sitting open for the the daylight hours, and they walk in without questioning from the guards. There is only a nod between Donnic and one of the women, and Anders ducking his head down, as if his great height can be hidden so easily behind Zevran.

Anders glances at Fenris. “I take it you’re remaining in the city for the time being.”

“I have no plans to leave.”

Anders looks again at Fenris, fairly obvious that he wishes to say something else. He opens his mouth, but closes it again. He nods his goodbye, and slides away down into Darktown.

 

 

The bloody rain has dried on Fenris’ face in the cracks and the wrinkles and that small scar across eir jawline. They go to the Hanged Man for company, but find Varric in business and Merrill talking with the barman.

Zevran puts his hand on Fenris’ forearm, carefully avoiding the spikes. “Come with me,” he says. “You’re looking a proper mess.”

“Fit right in, then,” Fenris says, allowing emself to be taken up the stairs. Zevran picks the lock to Isabela’s room. There is cold water and a damp cloth. Zevran wets it properly and cleans Fenris’ face, hand on eir chin to tilt eir head this way and that. Ey is beautiful, hair silvery and soft, the rain making it frizz just enough that it seems to float like a halo around eir face.

“Do you mind being kissed?” Zevran asks without thinking. He is doing that an awful lot, for someone who has always known exactly which combination of words to select to illicit the desired reaction.

He watches as Fenris glances at his lips, and back away again. “It has been,” eir voice is soft-pitched and hesitant. “A long time.”

“Nothing fancy. Just a kiss. I would offer a hug but I fear your armour.”

“You enjoyed your day, then?”

Zevran rolls his shoulders in a shrug, feeling that comfortable tightness that comes with exertion. “A delightful bit of sparring with Tal-Vashoth? You know how to please a man.”

Fenris’ eyes skitter away, dark face darkening in a blush. “I’m glad. I had hoped that I picked your interests properly.”

“First a room full of treasure and now this. What next? Is there a bathhouse here? Or a tattooist? I have been meaning to get my right leg done.”

“In the same pattern as your face?” Fenris asks. Ey hesitates for half a moment before brushing eir fingertips along the two lines.

“Probably.”

“You have tattoos elsewhere?”

“My back, and left side of my torso, and my hip.”

“Why?” Fenris cannot fathom anyone having tattoos voluntarily. Ey knows they are not the same as lyrium, ink does not burn, has never sent anyone insane.

“There was a house I once saw,” Zevran says, setting down the cloth. “May I do your hair?” In answer Fenris undoes the ribbon and turns around. Zevran nudges eir shoulder and ey sits on the chest at the foot of Isabela’s bed. “I was young, still travelling with the Crows as a group rather than a lone assassin.” He tugs the damp strands of hair free from each other. Realising there must be a brush around somewhere he darts away to find it. “Sixteen, perhaps?”

“When did you graduate to being alone?”

“A few years later.” Brush in hand he returns to stand behind Fenris. “The house was in shambles. It was once very beautiful, I am certain. Mosaics in the walls, huge ceilings, grand architecture. Sorry,” he mummers, when a tangle jerks Fenris’ head towards him. “It was a very old house. There were mosaics of the rising against the qunari during the Storm Age. And all over the outside there were vines. Some disease must have struck them - if we had been south I might suggest the cold, but Antiva is warm as a summer’s day all year through.” He pauses in pleasant memory.

“The tattoos are the vines.”

“The house looked so grand, all tangled up. I have gone back to look for it, but the location is not marked on any map I have seen since.”

He begins braiding, fingers moving fast in familiar motion, coming to a dead stop when Fenris touches his hand. “What are you doing?”

“A braid.”

“Not a plait?”

“I can plait, if you prefer. This will keep the shorter pieces out of your eyes, is all.”

“Whatever you think is best,” Fenris says, placing eir hands back into eir lap.

“Tattoos are such work,” Zevran continues. “Especially if I do not know what the morrow will bring. They need to be clean and dry, but if I am sleeping on dirt and bathing in a stream, well. I have seen infected tattoos.”

“Taking care of them is difficult?”

“They are open wounds. But,” he reaches over Fenris’ shoulder in askance for the ribbon. “If I am to be here for some time I see no reason to not indulge, yes?”

“You are staying?”

Zevran flicks the end of the braid over Fenris’ shoulder to show em. “I think I will. This city has much more to offer than I had thought. Likely there is work to be found for one such as I.”

“Varric can no doubt help you find it.” Ey looks up at Zevran. “You truly wish to stay?”

“You promised to show me what you want.”

There is a laugh outside the door, Isabela loud and Merrill stuttering out a laughing explanation. “I had thought it would take more than a single day to show you.”

“What can I say?” says Zevran. “Perhaps I did not need much tempting.”


End file.
